


The Loser

by Rerin



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Awful sex, Bottom Thor (Marvel), Extremely Dubious Consent, Hulk Needs a Hug, Hulk Sex (Marvel), Hulk is not evil, Loki (Marvel) is a Good Bro, Multi, Pegging, Strap-Ons, Thor's a whore, Thor: Ragnarok (2017), Val's got Guilt, Val(dom)/Thor(sub), and gets raped, see you in the special hell, the Grandmaster' a perv
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-19
Updated: 2018-10-28
Packaged: 2019-06-12 23:38:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 14
Words: 85,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15351279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rerin/pseuds/Rerin
Summary: The story of how Thor got whored out on Sakaar after the fight with the Hulk, and how what happened to him was Val’s fault, and how while initially she didn’t care, later she came to care a whole lot.  There will be Hulk/Thor here which is gonna hurt, but mainly, this is all about Val/Thor, and I’m not gonna lie, it’s dark.





	1. Selected for retention

**Author's Note:**

> This evil little plot bunny would not go away so it's getting written. If you read my other Hulk/Thor story, that one is fluffy and sweet, the way Hulk/Thor is supposed to be: in THIS story, I'm writing the version of events where Thor gets hurt. Also worth noting, in this story Hulk/Bruce/Thor don't fall in love, Thorki's not a thing, and both Bruce and Val are kind of a mess towards the end. Will be 14 chapters.

Chapter 1: Selected for retention 

Thor was having the dream again. Asgard in flames, Asgard destroyed, reduced to a boiling cloud of dust. Then: those serene cliffs in Norway, tall grass shivering in the breeze. It felt…calm, at first, but then it felt horribly _wet_ , water trickling down his ribs, down his stomach, down his legs--

Water doused his face, jolting him awake. “Argh!” he sputtered, and attempted to sit up, but a now-familiar buzz of pain held him still.

“ZgtztYou’re awake?!” a distressed creature chittered, its garbled vocalizations pushing the limits of the Allspeak. Thor couldn’t name its species, but it had a lot of arms, and a lot of eyes. It began to back away, dropping the hose it had been holding.

“Wait,” Thor said, voice rough. “Wait—don’t be afraid. I’m not--”

The alien gave a panicked chirp and fled, a panel hissing shut from ceiling to floor behind it.

“…Not going to hurt you,” Thor finished in a sigh. The thought that he might not be _able_ to hurt anyone under the current circumstances hovered at the back of his mind, not fully formed. 

He glanced around, determining that he was naked, wet, and alone in a small dank room. The last thing he remembered: the Hulk smashing him senseless in the arena. That had been the hardest hit that Thor had ever taken, and his body had not yet recovered. It felt like he’d been out for hours. Had he… had he _lost?_ No, surely not—he’d won the fight, and that was why he’d been zapped at the end. Hulk’s final blow hadn’t counted; it had been a hit after the bell.

Thor groaned a little and tried to move again, but was restrained by the same power that had confined him to that chair during his introduction to Sakaar and its bizarre master. Only this time he was flat on his back, stretched out on a table which was slanted just enough to let water run off. 

Clearly he’d been brought here to be hosed down after the fight—and it seemed most of the dirt and grime had been washed away before he’d managed to wake up. Water was still rushing from the abandoned hose, draining away through a grate in the floor. Thor couldn’t exactly explain it, but something about this room made it seem like a place where cadavers were dissected. Maybe it was the metallic air, the vague smell of chemicals. 

He heard the click of a lock, and the door-panel slid back up into the ceiling, revealing a contingent of heavily armored guards, led by the stocky female who’d called Scrapper 142 a ‘booze hag’. Thor raised his eyebrows at her, surprised to see someone that he recognized. He tried to recall what he knew of her—she hadn’t said much, but she’d made no secret of her dislike for Scrapper 142, and she’d been quite eager to hand over the Melt-stick for the execution of the Grandmaster’s cousin. In any case she seemed like she might be more stable than her eccentric boss.

“Hello,” Thor said genially, trying his best to remember her name. Wasn’t it…some kind of gemstone? Tourmaline…Turquoise… “Topaz, wasn’t it? Sorry about my, uh, lack of pants.” He scrunched up his face in what he hoped was an appropriate expression.

If Topaz was impressed that he knew her name, or if she had any opinions at all about his lack of pants, it didn’t show on her face. “Lord of Thunder,” she began flatly. “I’m here to offer the Grandmaster’s congratulations—”

“Thank you,” Thor said right away, his shoulders relaxing. “I knew I won that fight.”

Topaz stared at him, slightly annoyed at her role in these formalities. “…You lost,” she informed him.

“Pfft,” Thor scoffed. “I don’t think so.”

“As I was saying, congratulations, loser: you’ve been selected for retention.”

“So I live to fight another day,” Thor said confidently, smiling at Topaz to let her know that he totally had this gladiator business figured out. “Just let your master know that if he’s not going to honor his promise to free me after I defeated his Champion, I am going to demand a rematch.”

The corners of Topaz’s mouth flipped up in a grin. “There’s not going to be any rematch,” she told him, a sudden surge of sadistic glee in her voice. “You’re out of the Contest. You’ve been assigned to the Playhouse.”

Thor frowned. “Is that like… a theater?”

Topaz’s grin curled further. “At times. We also call it the Farm.”

‘Farm’ and ‘theater’ didn’t add up to a clear picture in Thor’s mind. “…Why’s that?” he asked.

“Because that’s where we keep the animals,” Topaz said bluntly, seeming like she was absolutely relishing this conversation now. “The kind of animals you rent for a fuck.”

“Ugh,” Thor scowled, his expression clouding and the atmosphere of the room condensing slightly around him in response. His neck and shoulders tensed as he shook his head the half-inch that he was able to move it, side to side. “I don’t approve of that. You tell your master that I—”

“It’s a brothel,” Topaz clarified, some of her previous impatience crowding back in. “A whorehouse.”

Thor blinked, his disgust receding slightly. “Oh. Well, I’m afraid I’m not interested in brothels at the moment,” he declared. “Maybe when I was younger, but these days, no thank you.”

Topaz shifted her weight from one foot to the other, cocking her head slightly, like she couldn’t tell if he was being serious. “…This isn’t an offer to go to a brothel for your own amusement. You’re being assigned there. To work.”

“That’s not a good idea,” Thor informed her. “I suppose I’d be all right as a bouncer or whatever you call them here but if the girls were being mistreated I’d be likely to help them escape.”

Topaz stared at him in silence, her dark eyes clotting with anticipation of the moment of realization she was about to inflict. “There is no such thing as escape,” she said. “And there are very few creatures there that could be called ‘girls’. You’re going to the place where they keep the beasts. And you’re going to be a whore.”

Thor looked at her in open surprise. He’d been hostile and defiant when he’d been restrained in that chair, being maneuvered around the Grandmaster’s palace and sold for ten million units—that had angered him, but _this_ was too unbelievable to be infuriating.

After a handful of shocked seconds, he laughed. “That’s not happening,” he said, voice light, even as a cautionary thought in the back of his mind reminded him of Mjolnir, and how it had been taken away from him. Hela had told him _he had no idea what's possible_. If Mjolnir had been shattered, what else could happen to him? What other fundamental part of himself could be taken away?

Topaz shifted again. “Go ahead,” she invited. “Tell me why not.”

Thor balked. He knew these people didn’t care who he was the son of, where he was the prince of, or what he was the _god_ of, for that matter. But they did seem to respect sheer strength. 

“Because I’ll refuse to go along with it,” he explained, and then sighed. “Listen, I’m not--this isn’t just boasting.” He hoped he was putting forth a reasonable argument. “You saw me fight the Champion, didn’t you? Who on this planet would be strong enough to take me against my will?”

There seemed to be a mutter of agreement among the other guards, and Thor searched their various face masks and visors for some sign of support.

Topaz smirked at him, and pulled off her armored gloves. “As long as you’ve got that disk on your neck?” She dropped the gloves to the floor and stepped over them, approaching the table. “...Just about anyone.” Her smile finally cracked enough to show teeth. She smacked his thigh, and he jerked, startled.

“Flip him over, boys,” Topaz ordered. “Let’s break him in.”


	2. Unfuckable

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thor's not your average slave... he's not going down without a fight.

Chapter 2: Unfuckable

Topaz activated the button on her fob device, and Thor found himself trapped once again in a torrent of pain, unable to speak. But he refused to be defenseless. Despite being paralyzed, he still had the wellspring of his power within him. He couldn’t hurl a lightning bolt across the room in this state, but if he _focused_ \--

The first guard who touched him was instantly electrocuted, lightning cracking across his armor, quick as a viper from Thor’s skin to his assailant’s brain. The guard dropped to the ground and the others drew back, cursing.

Topaz frowned and nodded to one of the others, who crouched beside the fallen man, yanking off his helmet and checking for signs of life.

“Dead,” came the verdict, delivered in a monotone through an electronic voice processor.

Topaz turned to Thor, eyes narrowed. “You’re not supposed to be able to do something like that with the disk turned on,” she muttered and powered it down, to the palpable dismay of the other guards, who now had to step over their fallen comrade to retreat from their intended victim.

“I told you,” Thor panted, glaring at her. “It’s not happening.” 

Topaz wrenched a bulky laser rifle from one of the guards and leveled it at Thor’s chest. “Will this kill you?” she asked blankly.

“What?” Thor scowled, looking from her face to the muzzle of the weapon. “I don’t…”

Topaz didn’t wait for him to finish. She pulled the trigger and blasted him in the shoulder.

“Ow!” Thor yelled as the blast blistered his skin. Topaz stepped closer, careful not to touch him, and examined the mark.

“I bet that’ll heal quick enough,” she judged, and hovered the rifle just an inch off his skin, before pulling the trigger four more times, hitting the same spot each time, burning a shallow crater into his flesh.

Thor grit his teeth and turned his scream into a growl as smoke rose from the wound. 

“So you can be burned,” Topaz remarked, almost conversationally. “I bet it would take the Melt-stick an entire hour to get rid of you. Can you be cut?”

Thor’s eyes glinted. “Will anything I say deter you from finding out?” he asked in a low voice, carefully pooling his energy. 

“You.” Topaz pointed to one of the guards, and handed him a knife. She nodded back at Thor. “Cut his face.”

The guard nodded, stepped in warily, blade aimed at Thor’s cheek. The instant the metal touched his skin, Thor lashed out—the lightning traveled up the metal blade and through the body of the man holding it, and he too fell to the floor, lifeless.

Two down—four guards left. “You and you,” Topaz snapped at a pair of the remaining guards. “Drag these bodies out of here.” Exasperated, she raised her forearm, and tapped at a button on her armored sleeve. “Boss, we’ve got a problem.”

“ _Problem?_ ” answered the voice of the Grandmaster. “Oh dear. Tell me all about it, Topaz.”

“It’s your Lord of Thunder. He’s unfuckable.”

“Oh, is that right?” the Grandmaster sounded bemused, as if this information was only mildly interesting. “Does he not have, the, uh, the right parts for it, or—wait a minute, I remember he’s got a mouth, what’s wrong with his mouth? Did you try his mouth?”

“He’s got the standard parts, and I didn’t try his mouth.” Topaz glared at Thor over her raised wrist. “The problem is he can kill people who touch him. He’s killed two of my guys already.”

“Even with the disk?!” now the Grandmaster sounded shocked.

“Yeah,” Topaz reported. “Disk was on full force when he killed the first one.”

“Did you try, I mean this isn’t for everyone, but did you try, like, an object—you know, ‘poke him with a stick’, from a distance? Not that too many people would be into that, but, some people might.” 

Topaz rolled her eyes. “The second guy touched him with a knife, and the lightning or whatever went up the knife and killed him. I’m telling you, this one’s unfuckable. Better off as meat.”

“Hmm.” There was an obvious frown in the Grandmaster’s tone. “This is quite a puzzle. But I gotta have him, Topaz. He belongs in the Playhouse, I just know it—I thought he’d be a natural from the look of him. This may be a silly question, but, did you try knocking him out?”

“…Not yet,” Topaz admitted.

“Well for goodness’ sakes, try that,” the Grandmaster urged. “Let me know how it goes.”

There was a small noise of the transmission ending, and Topaz lowered her arm. Thor knew the disk could knock him out—he’d been knocked out when the Scrapper had hauled him into her ship, and again when he’d been taken out of the ship and strapped into that chair. He had no idea if he’d be able to protect himself at all once he was unconscious. He’d certainly never done anything like that before, as far as he knew.

Thor latched on to the idea that maybe, even out cold, his body would still be able to unleash its power onto anyone who assaulted him, like a reflex.

He felt another burst of pain, and all went black.

 

When he came around, he was on his stomach, bent over the edge of the table. And still trapped, paralyzed in place. Did they know he was awake? Thor guessed they probably didn’t and decided to pretend he was still out. He reached inward to the core of his power, waiting for someone to try to touch him.

Topaz, somewhere out of his field of view behind him, seemed to be reporting back to her boss. “It’s not gonna work,” she was saying, voice flat.

“What happened?” the Grandmaster’s voice wondered from the communicator, sounding concerned. 

“Even knocked out he’s still too tough,” Topaz complained. “After we knocked him out he killed one more of my guys but then we got smart, we left the dead body on top of him for a while until he stopped sparking.”

Thor had no memory of that, but was thankful for the information—apparently he could rely on his innate power for some defense, if he concentrated on an imminent threat in the moment before blacking out. 

“Once his lightning burnt out, we were able to spread his legs.”

“Mm, that sounds promising,” the Grandmaster remarked. “How was it after that?”

“Awful,” Topaz announced. “I’m telling you, you’ll be disappointed. He may be nice enough to look at but he’s no fun to fuck. Would take way too much effort. Not worth the strain.”

“Effort? Well, nobody likes it when it’s too easy, if you know what I mean. I want him for the _House_ , not the Pillow Garden.”

“Maybe I’m not explaining this right,” Topaz said, exasperated. “You know how the disk tenses ’em up? Makes ’em all stiff inside?”

“Oh yeah, I’m familiar,” the Grandmaster drawled. “One of my favorite features.”

“With a normal slave it’s not a problem, but with this one, he’s too strong. With the disk on him, you’d need somebody as strong as he is—or some kind of machine--to pry him open. And not one of your regular machines, he’d break those.”

“Hmmm, impressive...” it sounded like he might be doing a mental inventory of his ‘regular machines’ at that very moment.

“You’d need something custom-built,” Topaz advised, voice flat.

The Grandmaster groaned. “Sounds like a hassle. And all that for what, to risk getting your dangly bits electrocuted? All right, here’s what I’ve got so far. First, we need to turn off the lightning. Second, we need him to relax. That about cover it?”

“Like I said boss, he’s unfuckable.”

The Grandmaster made a tutting noise of disapproval. “Topaz if I didn’t know better I’d think you were trying to change my mind about this. Take him to the Playhouse! I’ll figure something out.” The communication ended and Topaz grumbled something under her breath.

“Put him on a cart,” Topaz instructed the three remaining guards. “Let’s go.”

Two of the guards grabbed Thor by the arms and in a flash of light, both of them died on the spot.

“Fuck,” Topaz swore and picked up the laser rifle again, blasting Thor over and over until the gun’s energy cartridge was thoroughly depleted.

And then, she knocked him back out.


	3. Thor meets the Madam

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OK--things get weird here, but I promise it's a calculated kind of weird that will pay off later, so hang in there.   
> Val shows up in the next chapter and that's when shit gets real.

Chapter 3: Thor meets the Madam

Thor woke up on a hovercart, his torso a ruined map of burns from Topaz’s rifle, his body just beginning the arduous work of healing. He recognized the low buzz of energy from the disk in his neck, holding him flat on his back—but the horrible pain he felt was from the burns, not the disk, and it was severe enough that he almost wished he was still unconscious.

He was moving—or rather, being moved, down a long hallway, Topaz marching beside him in her heavy armor. She glanced down at him and smirked.

“…You didn’t have to shoot me,” Thor mumbled at her.

“You didn’t have to kill five of my guards,” Topaz replied.

“They were trying to rape me,” Thor said, although of course Topaz knew that already.

“They were doing their job, and if you were smart you would’ve done _your_ job and let them.”

Thor couldn’t fully move his head to shake it, so he just frowned. “Never,” he said quietly. 

Topaz sneered in exasperation. “I’d knock you out again, but we’re here. Time to meet your new boss.”

They’d reached an arched doorway, and the ‘door’ flickered out of existence as Topaz tapped at a keypad next to it, briefly revealing a thin lattice of red lines of light—the grid of a force field embedded within the hologram of the door.

Beyond the doorway was a spacious and oddly artistic parlor, decorated with life-sized black stone statues depicting various species of aliens engaged in sex acts, each one carved with a fluidity that looked cruelly expensive. There were desks and chairs and other sleek, business-like furniture pieces positioned around, as if this were a place where salespeople met with potential customers, to review the details of a contract. _Car dealership,_ Thor recalled from Earth. That’s what this place reminded him of—except on Earth, they had vehicles on display in such a place, rather than sex statues. 

Topaz cleared her throat, and Thor noticed a looming figure gliding towards them, its upper body held as motionless as one of the statues while black skirts swished around its lower half. Thor got the distinct impression that it might have more than two legs, hidden in all that flowing fabric, though the shape of its torso was humanoid. It was wearing an elaborately layered headdress of long draping threads, red and black, which formed an impenetrable veil. Thor couldn’t see its face, or even make out the shape of its head.

“Topazzaran-pazaamaria,” the figure said in a feminine voice, possibly thwarting the Allspeak.

“Madam Xexotist,” Topaz greeted her, and nodded down at Thor’s naked and burn-marked body on the cart, her tone unimpressed. “Here he is.”

“Assigned by the Grandmaster personally,” Madam Xexotist mused, tilting the curtains of her inscrutable headdress in Thor’s direction. It was impossible to tell from her tone whether or not she approved of the aforementioned assignment. She raised one milk-white arm, her skin a startling contrast to the black-and-crimson of her clothing, and gestured towards the back of the showroom. “Please, bring the slave into my office.”

The Madam’s office contained more statues matching those in the parlor, but on a smaller scale, and the furniture was plusher—everything covered in velvet. 

“It’s nice to see you, Xex,” Topaz said as soon as the office door sealed behind them. “Business good?”

“Never better,” the Madam replied coolly. “Always stepping up our game, for our game-loving proprietor.”

“You’re going to have to step it up considerably with this one,” Topaz informed her, with another curt nod towards Thor.

Thor frowned. “Excuse me, Madam,” he began.

“Tell the slave it will not speak to me,” Madam Xexotist said to Topaz, conversationally.

“My name is Thor,” Thor felt compelled to mention.

“Hey,” Topaz barked at him, raising her voice. “You don’t speak to her, _Thor_.”

“What does the Grandmaster call it?” enquired the Madam.

“Didn’t you watch the fight?” Topaz sounded mildly surprised. “Last night, with the Champion?”

“I watched.” The Madam’s voice was icewater. “I just didn’t listen to it. You know how I hate the… _noise_.” Somehow, she put an emphasis into that last word that gave Thor goosebumps.

“Right,” Topaz said. “Well, they’re calling him the ‘Lord of Thunder’, and, for a handle, ‘Sparkles.’”

“Very well,” said the Madam, and before Thor could commit to speaking up in protest, she reached out and squeezed her hand around his cock. In one quick motion she pulled it up vertically from his body and then let go, so it flopped against the burned skin of his abdomen.

“Hey, don’t--!” Thor yelped, but she’d already released him by the time he got the words out. He twitched against the restraining power of the disk. It had been so unexpected, he had been completely surprised. Her hand on him had been as firm and smooth as pearl—as if her whole hand was a single, hand-shaped pearl. He’d never felt anything like it. And her grip had been expertly tight.

“Average,” stated the Madam, and it took Thor a minute to register that she might have been talking about him.

“What?” Thor sputtered, taken aback. It was the first time anyone had used that word in reference to any part of his body—especially his _naked_ body, which was suddenly indicating a vague interest in feeling more of the cool hard silk of her hand. 

“Careful,” Topaz warned. “It’s dangerous, touching him—he can kill you on contact. Zapped five guards to death when we tried to welcome him to his new profession.”

“I see,” noted the Madam, all business. “How is he on the disk?”

Topaz shrugged. “Seems normal, gets good paralysis. But even on the max, if you touch him he can still be lethal if he wants to be. If he’s disked unconscious, he’s still got a couple of shocks left in him, but if you drain those off, it should be safe to touch him—for all the good that’ll do you. I already tried telling the Grandmaster, and now I’ll tell you: this guy’s too tough to fuck. You’d do better jackhammering your way into a Kronan than getting a decent poke at Sparkles here.”

“Hm,” said the Madam, and by now Thor was beginning to regard her voice as extremely discomfiting. “We’ve had tough ones before. How does he take the other function?”

“Dunno. Didn’t try it,” Topaz admitted.

“What’s ‘the other function’!?” Thor demanded, feeling more stressed out with almost every word they were saying.

“Tell the slave to be silent,” Madam Xexotist instructed, picking up a fob device from her desk. It was similar to the one used by the Grandmaster, with a lot more settings and control options than the basic one used by Scrapper 142. 

“Hey slave,” Topaz smirked at him. “Shut your face hole, before I stuff something in it.”

Thor mustered a scowl, but then the fob device blinked, and the ‘other function’ of the disk became clear. Instead of excruciating pain, Thor was overwhelmed with pleasure. Every nerve throbbed with it, waves of euphoria sweeping through him from the soles of his feet to the top of his head and back down. He was still held in place, a soft rumble building in his chest until it emerged as a whimper.

The Madam seemed to be listening intently as Thor made all sorts of low, desperate sounds. Topaz looked totally disgusted.

Finally the Madam tapped the button to revert the disk to its usual setting, deactivating the pleasure function so abruptly that tears welled in Thor’s eyes. Worse, the euphoric feelings from the disk had rendered him fully erect, the head of his cock now hovering just below his navel.

“So beautifully quiet,” the Madam remarked, now with a distinct note of admiration. “Extraordinary. The Grandmaster has an unrivaled eye for resistance. This one is truly built for it.”

Thor felt a rush of confusion, mingled with a rush of heat. He’d been called beautiful and extraordinary before, but this was the first time anyone had called him _quiet_. It was also the first time he’d been completely hard and exposed in the presence of two women that he did _not_ want to fuck. He felt totally disoriented, like none of this was real. He wondered if the Madam would touch him again. Probably not, since now she knew he could kill her—but then he wondered if he really would be able to go through with killing her, to expend that lethal energy against her, if she wrapped her hand around his rock-hard cock right now—the thought made him feel sick. He’d never combined thoughts of sex with thoughts of killing in his mind; had never desired to hurt anyone who’d pleasured him. Sex and violence were entwined in the darker hearts of the universe, but it had never been that way for him.

“I don’t use that function,” Topaz was saying, ignoring Thor completely. “Seems like a waste. Pain’s better.”

“Most of the ones we get from the arena have a tolerance of pain,” mused the Madam. “Tolerance of the other function is a much rarer gift. Does the Grandmaster want him on an exclusive contract?”

“Nah, he’s got at least a hundred exclusives already. He didn’t say directly, but, I think I know what he’s up to.” Topaz smirked, and whispered something into the side of the black-and-red veil, which inclined slightly to receive the secret.

“Interesting,” the Madam remarked, as Topaz leaned back, looking smug. “And quite ambitious. And, you’ve been right about his intentions before.”

“Sometimes I know what he wants before he knows it himself,” Topaz bragged. “In this case, keep it hush until we know for sure if that’s what he’s planning.”

“Naturally. Wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise.” The Madam tipped her head down, the threads of her headdress swaying, and Thor got the impression that she had finally taken an interest in the state of his arousal. She picked up another device from her desk, a little hand-held scanner. “Best to confirm our proprietor’s intent, before we proceed,” she murmured, but proceeded right ahead with what was apparently a scan of Thor’s cock. “Will you call him, Tope?” she asked distractedly.

“Sure.” Topaz tapped the button on her forearm and cleared her throat. “Boss, it’s me.”

“Topaz!” answered the Grandmaster’s voice, utterly delighted. “How’s our little Lord of Thunder? Any satisfied customers yet?”

“We’re at the Playhouse,” Topaz reported. “And no, not yet. Madam Xexotist would like a word.”

The Madam was now setting the scanner onto a little dock in an alcove on the wall behind her desk.

“Sexy Xexy!” exclaimed the Grandmaster’s voice, from Topaz’s communicator. “What’s up?”

“Grandmaster,” the Madam greeted politely, while pressing keys on a little pad next to the alcove. “Thank you for the new employee.”

“I knew you’d like him,” the Grandmaster enthused. “He’s quite a catch, don’t you think? Just, he’s got that _capacity_. Mmmh...” His voice drifted into a hum.

“Yes, I noticed. He’ll do well here. Do you have any special instructions? Anything in particular you’d like me to do with him?”

“Oh, Noo… nothing in particular,” The Grandmaster’s tone was light, airy, and blatantly evasive—and Topaz raised her eyebrows at the Madam, an expression of _‘see, he’s up to something’_ on her face. “Just do your thing! Rent him out, make some money. The citizens loved him last night; I bet there’ll be a line out the door for him.”

“And our… elite clienteles? Those with special interests, should they have access? Any limits?”

“Well, I mean, for the right price,” the Grandmaster said. “Of course. Nothing’s off limits for this one, Xex—I mean, did you see him, knocking the Hulk across the ring?? If you’ve got any special enthusiasts who can beat _that_ , I mean, let ‘em have at it, you know? Just, go for it. If he’s breakable, break him. I mean if he can’t handle it, let’s hurry up and get it over with, is what I’m saying, avoid a mess later.”

Topaz’s lips quirked in a grin. _Told you,_ she mouthed at the Madam.

“I understand,” the Madam said coolly. “We won’t hold back.” There was a faint beep from the alcove, and she turned and opened a little cupboard in the wall.

“Good, good. Really put him out there,” said the Grandmaster. “Oh, but before you get too ‘Xextreme’ with it, I just thought of this—I think I’d like to take him out for a spin myself.”

Topaz rolled her eyes. “Yeah,” the Grandmaster continued, with growing enthusiasm. “Do what you need to do to train him, and then—you know what would be great? I’ve got a special day coming up, and I’m planning a little celebration, a little get-together,”

“Birthday orgy,” Topaz clarified.

“Topaz, how would I ever manage without you,” The Grandmaster muttered affectionately. “Yes. And I think that darling Lord of Thunder would be a perfect feature. Me and him: the main event. Oh yeah, that’ll make my day. How’s that sound, Xex? We’ll show everybody how sweet he is and, after that, I bet your elites will pay double for a taste of him.”

“It’s certainly doable,” the Madam said, and Thor caught a glimpse of what she’d taken out of the cupboard—it looked as smooth and milk-white as her arms, the phallic shape and the size of it unmistakable—he glanced down at himself as if to verify, but he already knew what it was: she’d scanned his cock and then synthesized a replica of it, perfectly to scale, right there in the wall of her office. The only thing wrong was the color—and Thor couldn’t decide if that made it more or less creepy. Why was it same color as her skin—had she synthesized her arms, too?

And then before he could stop himself from thinking about it he wondered what that fake cock felt like, if it had the pearl-soft texture of her hands. 

A string in his thigh quivered as he tried to repress a weird pang of arousal mixed with panic. He’d tried his fair share of adventurous and non-traditional things in bed but never with a copy of his own cock. 

“It is _not_ doable,” Thor spoke up through clenched teeth. “None of it’s happening, you are all delusional!”

“Uh oh,” purred the Grandmaster’s voice. “Hey there, Sparky. Sounds like you’ve still got some fight in you. Do I need to send the Champion over there, have him thrash you around again?”

“Called it,” Topaz muttered, and the Madam made a small amused noise.

“Send whomever you like,” Thor nearly yelled, tensing against the power of the disk, already knowing that it was futile. “I’m not going along with this—you can pin me down and knock me out with your blasted disk, and you might even be able to kill me. But I refuse to be your whore.”

“ _Refuse?_ Oh no, no. Ugh.” The Grandmaster’s voice had soured, an unmistakable whine in his tone, like a kid who’d just been told his least favorite vegetable was for dinner. “Not this again. Yuck. Topaz? Will you educate him please?”

Thor’s ‘education’ came in the form of a burst of pain from the disk, enough to shut him up. The one upside of this agony, he realized, was that his cock was now mercifully softening.

“There won’t be any of that nasty _refusing,_ ” the Grandmaster said, and then the cheer returned to his voice: “All my little pillows from the Garden and all my sturdy livestock from the Farm are all extremely willing, aren’t they?”

“Of course, Grandmaster,” Madam Xexotist assured him. “But as you’ve just heard, I may need some time to acquaint dear ‘Sparkles’ with our…standards.” At that final word she ran her fingers down the length of the fake cock, and then smacked it lightly against her palm, and Thor’s face flushed red.

“Take all the time you need,” The Grandmaster drawled. “Call me when he’s ready to party. Grandmasterrrr, out!”

Topaz sighed and shook her head as her boss ended the call. She glanced up at the Madam. “You’re gonna need someone to train him.”

“Yes, I know,” sighed the Madam, and set the replica cock down on her desk, pulling up a holographic screen and tapping at it several times. “It says here…he was originally harvested by a Scrapper… 142. Interesting.”

Topaz scowled. “She’s a piece of filth.”

“But she’s strong,” the Madam mused.

“She’s Asgardian, like this one,” Topaz acknowledged, dipping her head towards Thor. “They’re tough to kill.”

“And she harvested the Champion,” the Madam mentioned. “Anyone who can wrangle the Champion _and_ the only contender to ever survive against him might be worth considering for this…opportunity.”

Topaz shrugged. “And, if he kills her in the process, it’d be doing Sakaar a favor anyway.”

“Hmm. That reminds me, we need to neutralize his ability to kill.” The Madam tapped a key on her desk and held it down, apparently activating an intercom. “Yema, do we have any Disposables in the dock?”

“Yes Madam,” a voice answered obediently.

“Send the strongest one to my office,” she instructed, and released the key. “Now, to find a solution. Is it only electricity, that he controls?”

Topaz shrugged. “Might not be that simple, from what I’ve seen.”

“The disk should cancel anything magical.”

“Yeh, it _should_ ,” Topaz agreed. “But in his case? I’m telling you, he’s got power. It’s something inside him, not just something he does.”

“Power…inside him,” the Madam repeated softly, almost dreamily. Thor repressed a shudder. “I’ve dealt with power.” She opened another little cupboard in the wall, and this time she pulled out what appeared to be a black metal collar, affixed to a slinking black metal cable, made of a hundred fine strands twisted together. Thor couldn’t quite see what she did next, but she might have bent down and connected the end of the cable to something in the floor.

A door-panel that Thor hadn’t noticed before slid open, revealing a desperate-looking slave, herded forward into the room by an armored guard. He looked more-or-less like one of the humanoid gladiators from Korg’s cohort, well-muscled, battle-scarred. His eyes ran back and forth from Thor to Topaz to Madam Xexotist, terror—and hatred—plain on his face.

“Disposable,” announced the Madam quietly, garnering the attention of this new arrival. “Serve well and earn mercy. Put this collar around this slave’s neck.” She held the device out and gestured vaguely at Thor.

“Or, don’t do that, and help me escape instead,” Thor suggested urgently.

Topaz laughed aloud at that, a raucous, jeering sound, and the Disposable slave’s eyes narrowed. He eagerly took the collar and its attached cable from the Madam’s hands, and drew close to Thor’s neck, breathing raggedly.

“Hey, wait, wait!” Thor tried again, as the collar moved towards his throat. “Listen, if you touch me, I can kill you,” he warned.

The Disposable paused. “….then kill me,” he rasped, and then slid one side of the collar around the back of Thor’s neck.

Thor grit his teeth, not wanting to kill this man at all.

“Do it,” the slave whispered again, slowly reaching for the other side of the collar. “ _Kill me._ ”

“Heh heh, yeah, go on and kill him!” Topaz goaded, still laughing. “It’d be a cleaner death than what he’s heading for!”

Thor swallowed as the collar cinched closed, and met the slave’s eyes—and decided. He shut his eyes and called on the same energy he’d used to electrocute Topaz’s guards. The Disposable slave’s hand was touching Thor’s neck, so it should have been easy—but instead, Thor felt his lightning drawn up into the collar, absorbed by it. Not even a stray spark reached its target.

“Sorry,” Thor gasped, locking eyes again with the man he’d just tried to kill. “I’m sorry—I can’t.”

“Very good,” Madam Xexotist deemed, as the collar locked into place. “Now, to be sure…Disposable, try to fuck him.”

“What? No,” Thor protested, straining once more against the forces holding him in place. “Don’t,” he said to the Disposable slave, but the man’s eyes had already glazed over, hard and cold.

“You can use this if you like,” the Madam said, offering the synthesized cock. The slave took it, clenching it roughly in his fist. With his other arm he wrenched Thor’s right leg off the cart, and Thor was startled at how easily this man was able to manipulate his body, while he still couldn’t move at all on his own.

Despite the disk, Thor was resolved to fight. He tried the lightning again and once again felt his power sucked into the collar, leaving his assailant unharmed—but energy had moved, had transferred, from his flesh to the device around his neck. And then he remembered: _you know how I hate the… noise,_ the Madam had said, and: _So beautifully quiet._

_Sound!_ Thor thought about thunder, thought about where it came from—the energy, the shockwave—even on Midgard they had sonic weapons these days. There was air in the room; that was all he needed. Thor took a breath and let his power explode into the sump that was waiting for it, and sure enough he was able to make the shockwave of the energy transfer burst through the room in a single deafening crack.

The Disposable slave collapsed, all his organs liquified within him. It was the first time Thor had killed anyone with purely acoustic trauma. Thor himself felt instantly worse for wear, and noted that many of his own capillaries appeared to have ruptured under his skin. And then he felt something dripping from his ears, and realized it was blood. His lightning had never hurt him, so he’d had no idea he could injure himself with thunder.

Behind her desk, the Madam was quivering, all the threads of her headdress shimmying frantically. On the other side of the room, Topaz and the guard who had escorted the now-dead slave both looked stunned—but Topaz quickly recovered, grinning. Thor noted there was blood dripping from her ears, too. “What did I tell you?” Topaz half-yelled at the Madam, Thor barely able to make out her words over the ringing tone and partial deafness he’d inflicted upon himself. “He’s too tough to fuck!”

“He’s injured himself,” noted the Madam, voice unnervingly calm, and almost impossible for Thor to hear. “Guard, take him to a cell. Anchor his collar to the floor and summon a medic to treat him. I’m going to call that Scrapper.”

The guard scrambled to obey.


	4. Hard way or harder way

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Val shows up and gets to work.  
> Thor isn't going to make this easy.

Chapter 4: Hard way or harder way

The cell was remarkably similar to the room where Thor had first woken up after the fight. The walls were bare and windowless, the air metallic, and there was a drain in the middle of the floor. There were a few oddly-shaped and smooth-surfaced pieces of furniture which looked fairly indestructible. 

They cuffed his hands together behind his back, fastened the cable from his collar to a port near the ominous drain, and left him alone.

The healer they sent was a rag-clad old woman wearing both a holographic helmet with multi-lensed goggles and a necklace of rodent skulls, the sort of character who looked like she might be equally equipped for piloting a single-seat starfighter or boiling newts in a cauldron. The medical instruments she brought with her, at least, were all terrifically advanced, and Thor didn’t (couldn’t) resist any of her efforts to treat his injuries. 

The first time he tried to speak to her she grunted a warning, and when he failed to heed that and tried again to address her, she clapped a broad strip of tape over his mouth. “ _Slave no talk_ ,” she croaked, and resumed her work. 

She healed the burns from Topaz’s laser-rifle and the damage from Thor’s sonic blast, thankfully clearing up the maddening ringing in his ears. She then clucked her tongue at him as she discovered and set to work on the internal injuries from his fight with the Hulk, all the places where muscle had been mashed against bone and where bones had been laced with hairline fractures. He would have healed on his own, given a little time, but she had the tools to accelerate that process, and Thor was glad for the help.

He tried valiantly to get her to take the tape off his mouth when it seemed like she was done with him, but she ignored his muffled requests, packed up her equipment, and left.

Thor heaved his shoulders in a sigh, fidgeting against the cuffs on his wrists. At least they’d turned the disk off, and he could move again. The cable was long enough that he could move from one side of the cell to the other, and as he paced the room he began to come up with a plan: he’d get a guard to come in there, open the door, then Thor would break out of the cuffs, use his then-freed hands to strangle the guard with the cable—then break the cable or the collar and escape. After stealing the guard’s clothes, of course.

This plan hinged on the cuffs: it would be better if he could break them now, rather than wait for the guard to appear. He tensed his arms and tried to pull his hands apart—and the disk activated, causing him to drop to his knees, screaming against the tape on his mouth.

The disk subsided after a couple of seconds of punishment, and Thor decided he would need a new plan. The cuffs would probably be breakable, but only after he got free of that damned disk.

 

He was sitting on the floor, still struggling to think of a way to defeat the disk when the door opened again, and he couldn’t help the hopeful expression that crossed his face when he recognized who had come.

She stared at him, her eyes unfocused, dulled by drink. “…You know why I’m here?” she asked impatiently, stepping in. The door closed behind her. 

“ _Yhf_ ,” Thor said with a nod.

The Scrapper blinked at him in fury as if the very sight of him offended her. “Look at the state of you,” she muttered. “Naked, hair shorn off, collared and leashed like a dog. A slave and now a whore. And you don’t even have the sense to look humiliated.”

Thor was still for a second, and then took a risk. He smiled at her, despite the tape, and gave a little shrug. He knew this looked bad, but, now that she was here, he figured his situation might improve. Perhaps she expected him to be ashamed of his circumstances, but how would that help anything?

“…And you still have the gall to look at me with that face?” she seethed. “Like I’m your best fucking friend? Grow up.”

Now Thor looked hurt. “ _Mmrhm_ ,” he said. It wasn’t his fault that he lit up whenever he saw a potential ally. Even if she’d been the one who’d originally sold him, the one who’d put that disk on him in the first place--he had seen her tattoo. He knew what she _was_ , what she still could be. She could help him, he knew.

“Makes me want to slap that look right off your face,” she muttered. “You must be the stupidest person to ever land on this trash-pile planet.” She had a duffel bag over her shoulder, which clanked ominously as she now dropped it to the floor.

She sighed, and began to stretch her arms across her chest, rolling her shoulders like she was preparing for a fight. “Spoiled, stubborn, stupid fucking son of,” she grumbled, and Thor thought he heard a slur of alcohol in her voice as she trailed off, just short of his father’s name. “What is _wrong_ with you, anyway?” she went on, annoyed. “Probably as inbred as all fucking royal families—is your mother also your cousin or something, is that it?”

“ _Nh_ ,” Thor said, his brow furrowing in dismay.

In a flash she lunged at him, grabbed him by the hair at the top of his head. “ _Stop trying to talk with your mouth taped shut_ ,” she seethed, as if that were the worst imaginable offense. “It’s pissing me off.” She shoved his face away, causing him to fall onto his side.

Thor looked up at her from the floor and resisted the urge to verbalize a protest.

Slowly he sat back up. The Scrapper rolled her eyes. “Nevermind,” she slurred. “Silence is worse.” She reached down and yanked the tape off his lips.

“ _Gyah,_ thank you,” was the first thing he said, and for that she struck him across the face.

“Thank me when it’s over,” she muttered. “When you finally get it. Don’t thank me yet. They said you killed five people today, and one Disposable.”

“…That makes six people,” he corrected, voice low.

“Ha.” The Scrapper parked one fist on her hip, shaking her head. “No it doesn’t. You have no fucking clue how any of this— You think they’d tolerate that behavior—killing five guards—from any other slave, anyone the Grandmaster hadn’t personally assigned? Not a chance. And now they’ve called _me_ in to ‘train’ you? So it’ll be _my_ fault then if you electrocute the first fool who dips his dick where you don’t like it? I should have let those other scrappers cut you up for giblets when you first splashed down, spared myself this trouble.”

Thor scowled. “If you don’t want to be here, then go,” he urged. “Turn around and walk away. Or, better yet, help me get out of here. And if you don’t want to risk that, then just help me get this disk off my neck and I’ll do the rest.”

She stared at him as if he might have cracked his skull. “…Gods, you are dense,” she muttered. “Listen to me. There’s no way out of here. _No one leaves._ And because you were too stupid to die in the arena, now you’re gonna get fucked. And if you have a speck of common sense, you’re gonna get fucked and be good at it, because a whore who’s good at it survives, and a whore who _isn’t_ good at it becomes Disposable, understand?”

“No, because--” Thor said defiantly, but was cut off as she struck him again, this time knocking him over backwards. He stayed down, despite the awkwardness of his arms trapped behind him, and considered the dangerous slack in the Scrapper’s expression. He could handle being shoved around, but it was disappointing that she thought she had to be so rough, just to communicate with him. He realized he felt sorry for her--she’d been here too long and had lost hope.

She stepped in closer, standing over him with her feet in a wide stance, her eyes dark and too heavy for her face, everything in her posture threatening violence. “Let’s go,” she said, in no mood to waste anymore time. “Get your cock up.”

Thor attempted to scoot away from her, but she stepped on the cable. He frowned at her, incredulous. “I can’t just--” he started.

“Oh, I think you can,” the Scrapper interrupted. “And if you can’t, the disk’ll do it for you. Maybe it hasn’t occurred to you yet that half the customers here are going to want _you_ to fuck _them_.”

“That doesn’t change anything,” Thor insisted, shaking his head. “I’m not going to cooperate, either way.”

“Then you’ll be executed,” the Scrapper said flatly. “Tortured, raped, torn apart, and executed, for the whole planet to watch. It’ll be gory, and bloody, and you’ll sob for your mother, all right? Is that what you want?”

“…of course not,” Thor exclaimed.

“Then you’re going to fucking cooperate. With whatever they want from you. Starting now, with me. And I want you to get it up.”

He looked at her in disbelief and felt heat rush to his face instead of his cock. “Maybe if you, released my hands?” he suggested.

She shook her head. “I like your hands where they are. Other people might too,” she said, and held up the fob device that controlled the disk. “Last chance, your majesty.”

Thor considered his options here, thought about getting hard, thought about _her_ , a Valkyrie, commanding him to fuck her, which seemed to be where this was going—admittedly that was something of an old fantasy of his, but forcing _that_ fantasy to overlap with _this_ reality felt wrong. She didn’t want him—this wasn’t some epic battlefield romance where the Valkyries had noticed his skill and offered him a chance to join their ranks if he could prove himself worthy in bed, or any similarly ribald adolescent imagining, all of which Thor was slightly embarrassed to be recalling now. No, she didn’t want him. She’d probably been paid to be here, and that thought eliminated any possibility of arousal.

“…Fine,” said the Scrapper, and pressed the button, activating the pleasure function of the disk. This time, he was able to move, and so arched his back and curled his toes and felt a soft whine rising from the back of his throat.

As soon as the Scrapper seemed sure that he was as hard as he could get, she shut down the disk. “Wow,” she mused. “They weren’t kidding about that. Impressive.”

“…What do people usually do,” Thor asked, panting. “During that ‘other function’?”

The Scrapper gave a joyless smirk. “They scream,” she said simply. “They cry. They come all over the place.”

“Oh.” Thor swallowed. “…Do you think I should fake it?”

She looked at him blankly for a second. “That’s the first thing you’ve said that’s made any sense,” she told him, approving. “You might be on the right track after all.”

“No, I just don’t want anymore of this disk,” Thor told her.

“In a minute you’re not going to want anymore of this _dick_ ,” quipped the Scrapper. “But there’ll be more of it coming.”

Thor pressed his lips together, looked up and met her eyes. He wasn’t intimidated by this sort of banter; actually, it felt familiar—this could have been Lady Sif or Fandral flirting; even Hogun the Grim might’ve loosed a rare chuckle at a remark like that. This Valkyrie-turned-Scrapper could have easily been one of them, Thor thought. One of his friends. In any case, it now felt like maybe they were bonding.

Thor knew he had that sort of hopeful look on his face again and knew how ridiculously it corresponded with the bob of his cock against his abdomen; an erection she’d forced him to have probably wasn’t supposed to look that _cheerful._ He knew he looked ‘happy to see her’, or however that expression went on Earth—and he really couldn’t help it.

“Get that fucking look off your face,” she commanded. “I’m not your fucking friend.”

“But you could be,” Thor offered brightly, since that was exactly what he’d just been thinking about.

She set her jaw and looked away. “…They’re going to use you up,” she predicted darkly. “They’re going to turn you inside out and fucking _empty_ you.”

Thor frowned, noting the quiver of rage in her voice. Maybe they hadn’t been bonding after all.

“In any case, yes,” she advised, suddenly brisk. “Yes, you should fake it if you can. Fake your interest. Fake your enjoyment, your gratitude, your satisfaction. Fake your pain, if pain’s what they want you for.” Her eyes drifted across the room, and then resettled on him, dark and dull once again. “The problem with you is… I don’t think you can _fake_ anything.”

She wavered once, like she might have almost lost her balance.

“…How drunk are you right now?” Thor wondered in concern.

“Drunk enough to get on with this,” she said mostly to herself, and rummaged in the bag she’d brought with her, coming up with that creepy white replica of Thor’s cock.

“Ah,” said Thor flatly. “I was wondering what happened to that thing.”

“This ‘thing’ is all over Sakaar by now,” the Scrapper informed him, flipping it in the air and catching it. “Whenever they get a new boy in here they send one of these to a bunch of their regulars, as a courtesy. Free sample.”

“Ugh,” Thor scowled, his face scrunching up in disgust. “Wait, is that how you—are you one of the ‘regulars’?”

She stared at him a little too long. He regretted asking.

“I usually don’t have to pay for it,” she assured him at last, in a half-sultry way that was probably supposed to be a brag, but only sounded despicable to Thor.

“Is that because you usually _get_ paid for it?” Thor asked, echoing what she’d said to him in front of the Grandmaster, when she’d strolled out with ten million units and left him to the Contest.

She blinked, and the cords in her neck went taut, and Thor wondered if he’d gone too far. “Not that, if you had to sell your, I mean if you _chose_ to, and it was really your choice, I mean it is _your_ body after all—I didn’t mean to disparage anyone who--”

“I’ve been paid plenty,” she said, cutting off his clumsy retreat. “And you will be too. If you learn to keep your mouth shut, and your ass open.”

He looked warily at the fake cock in her hands. “Get up on the lounge,” she said, indicating one of the odd pieces of furniture. Thor wouldn’t have called it a ‘lounge’, but that was hardly relevant now.

“I’m not—” he began, but she held up the fob device.

“Hard way or harder way,” she warned.

Thor grimaced, moving to a semi-comfortable sitting position before settling in to his decision. He had hoped they might’ve kept this round to banter after all but if she was serious… damn it. He was going to have to fight her. 

The Scrapper was staring at his face, and Thor knew she was reading his resolve. “Up here,” she instructed, and patted the armrest of the lounge.

“I’m not going t—” he tried to say again, but she rolled her eyes and clicked the button and paralyzed him with pain.

“How about now?” she asked, once she let him out of it.

“...Nope,” he said, and braced for another hit from the disk—but she surprised him by switching it back to the pleasure function.

“Don’t want you getting soft on me,” she murmured, as he tried his best to curl up into a ball. She left the disk on for a few extra seconds, before finally shutting it down. His cock was aching now, his whole body feeling rung like one giant bell. He couldn’t fathom what sort of ‘resistance’ he supposedly had to that function; he felt completely consumed by it, like it might shiver his bones into smoke if it was left on too long.

But he hadn’t screamed, and he hadn’t come. He drew his knees to his chest and closed his eyes, catching his breath.

And she switched the controller back to pain, this time paralyzing him as he was, curled on his side. Whatever sounds he was making now were thankfully drowned out by the frenzied buzz of the disk.

The Scrapper squatted beside him and picked him up—lifted him up like he weighed nothing at all, and deposited him on the lounge how she wanted him, on his back with his ass up on the armrest, his legs bent over his body and out of the way. “You gonna stay put?” she asked warningly, knowing he couldn’t reply while the disk was still on. “I can truss you up if I need to. I brought my gear.” She waited two more seconds, then released him from the pain.

He took one relieved breath, his knees sinking to his ears, and then he tried his best to get up and out of there, and wound up paralyzed on the floor in a shuddering heap, the disk crackling away. She shook her head, seeming not the least bit surprised.

“I could do this all day,” the Scrapper remarked casually, picking him back up. It mattered not one bit that he was twice the size of her—she lifted his convulsing body with ease and dumped him back onto the lounge, positioning him as she spoke. “You want to fight? We’ll fight. With that collar on you can’t kill me. And if you want to do your special thunder trick, good luck—you’ll hurt yourself twice as much as you’ll hurt me, and in the end I’m still going to train you to be a good little whore.”

“ _Why?_ ” Thor demanded, as soon as she turned the disk off. He stayed in place this time, posed uncomfortably with his ass in the air and his knees on either side of his head.

“Maybe I don’t want to be executed because some spoiled royal brat won’t put out,” she grumbled, and went rummaging in her duffel bag again. “You want spit or lube?”

Thor blinked. “I don’t—” he started to say, and was cut short as she spat on him. Her aim hadn’t been very good, but she reached out with two fingers and smeared the spit down where she needed it.

Thor felt something settle, sadly, like an anchor in his heart. His decision to fight evaporated, replaced by a decision to endure. He looked up at her face, wondering what she must have been like, before. She had been a hero. 

She was brazen enough to stare right back at him, holding eye contact as she worked her jaw and spat on his ass again—this time hitting her mark.

The corner of Thor’s mouth flinched a bit. “What?” she asked. “You gonna cry? Scared to take your own cock up your ass?”

“No,” Thor said. “I was just thinking…”

But she wasn’t waiting to hear his thoughts—and she wasn’t going to tease him with her fingers. She gripped that fake cock in her hand and went to push it into him, straight down. “These don’t take much lube, anyway,” she mentioned casually. “They’re nice and slick.”

His body tensed and held her off at first, then yielded, the head of the thing sliding in.

“ _Heh_ ,” said Thor, and she spared him a glance that was half curiosity and half annoyance. That hadn’t been a sound of pain or of pleasure—he knew she’d heard all of the noises he had to give in those categories over the past few moments.

“Surprised how easy that was?” she asked, applying more pressure. He was resisting her again.

“Not exactly,” Thor admitted, glad that for the moment he was still able to hold her off. Like this, at this angle, and with her strength, he could tell that if he shifted the wrong way, if he went slack, the thing would all but fall the rest of the way into his body. 

“Don’t even need to comment on how this isn’t your first time, do I,” she sneered, and sunk that cock another half-inch in, despite his best efforts to keep it out.

Thor searched her dark eyes, saddened to realize it wasn’t her first time either. “…It’s the first time the person between my legs hasn’t been smiling at me,” he said quietly.

“How cute,” she deemed, unaffected. “What a nice life you’ve had, nothing but smiles and giggles in bed for the fucking golden prince of Asgard.” She put both hands on the base of the fake cock and leaned her weight against it, driving it down further into him, making him wince in discomfort. “Now you’re getting there,” she muttered, reading his face.

“I was just thinking,” Thor resumed saying, as if it made no difference at all to him what she might have rammed into his ass. “…That I feel sorry for you.”

“Nice try,” she said, and gave the fake cock a violent twist—which made him twitch, and let go a little more. The thing was halfway in when he managed to get control over it again, this time with a little huff of breath that was definitely an expression of pain. She studied his face, and eased back slightly on the pressure. “…you wanna explain that, or was that just some generic way of saying you think you’re better than me?”

Thor shook his head, glad for a brief reprieve from the assault. He’d been through a thousand far more painful experiences, many of them quite recently, but couldn’t remember anything _sexual_ ever feeling quite this awful—or feeling bad at all, honestly. “…I feel sorry for whatever happened to you,” he told her. “Whatever hurt you so badly that you…would do this.”

“Don’t act like you know anything about me,” the Scrapper protested, annoyed. “You don’t know me.”

“I know what you used to be,” Thor said, and his gaze drifted to her tattoo.

She pulled the fake cock up abruptly, and then all the way out. Thor automatically relaxed in its absence—and was startled as she jammed it right back in. He hadn’t been ready for it, and she shoved it down further than it had gone before.

“ _Aauh!_ ” Thor half-shouted, shocked by the stab of pain.

“There you go,” she slurred down at him, voice full of a false sweetness. She eased the thing down into him the final inch, and then gave its flat base a pat with her hand. “That’s it now. That’s your cock in your ass. Not so bad, is it?”

“…I’ll live,” Thor conceded, and then whispered “ _fuck_ ,” as she pried the thing up enough to grab hold of it again, and started to pump it up and down inside him. “ _Oh fuck._ ”

“That’s good,” the Scrapper judged. “They’ll like that. A little bit overwhelmed, but definitely getting into it. Warming up.” She began to pull it all the way out, hesitate for a beat, and then stick it back in. Again and again, surprising him with it each time. Thor bit his lip and tried to think. Now that she’d gotten this far, he figured there wasn’t much left she could do—she’d do this to him until she got bored of it, and then she’d stop and it would be over. So this was it, this was all he had to worry about. Maybe she’d want him in a different position before she was done—actually he rather hoped so, if this was going to go on much longer. Being on his back and folded up like this was getting more uncomfortable by the second. He wished he could put his legs down, maybe even turn over on his stomach—that would’ve been infinitely preferable. Not that any of this had anything to do with his preferences, because of course he would have preferred that it not be happening at all.

“Remember,” she said sharply. “You need to make them believe that you love this. If you lie there like a limp fish they’ll lose interest.”

He frowned up at her, but didn’t feel like commenting. Of course he didn’t _want_ ‘their’ interest, he didn’t want this at all, and he was going to figure out how to escape. It occurred to him that possibly, after she was done fucking him, the Scrapper might soften towards him a little—might be more inclined to help him. The idea that he could still win her over refused to leave his mind. It wasn’t too crazy to imagine that there were things she’d rather be doing right now, and if that was the case, maybe she could appreciate the fact that he wasn’t making this any more dreadful for her than it had to be. He was basically complying; maybe she’d be able to respect that, and they could move on from there. 

“Tell me you like it rough,” she snapped at him, derailing his hopeful thoughts yet again.

“…I don’t,” he told her instead.

“Convince me that you do, and I’ll make it rough and _quick_ ,” she proposed, making it abundantly clear what the other option would be.

Thor attempted to clear his throat, and stared up into her face. “Do it,” he said hoarsely. “Make it…rough and quick.”

“Yeah?” she asked, leaning in. “That what you want?” Her arm worked faster, fucking him. Fucking him dry. She was hardly killing him, but all the same he wished she would stop.

“Yes,” Thor said, unconvincingly. “Please.”

She practically growled in frustration, and pulled the fake cock out of him, hurling it across the room. 

Thor focused on breathing for a minute, listening to her breathing too. “…is it over?” he dared to ask.

“Gods, this is a nightmare,” the Scrapper said, turning and striding away. “You’re impossible, a fucking incorrigible disaster. It’ll be weeks before you’re ready to go.”

Thor decided he was probably allowed to sit up. Cautiously, he repositioned his body, lowering his feet to the floor and discovering all the places he was now aching and sore. He tried his best to smile at her. “…Actually I’m ready to go right now, if you’ll just take this disk off my neck,” he said in what he hoped was a confident and persuasive sort of voice.

She shook her head, and looked at him like he was truly insane. She reached into her bag and then tossed a shiny black bottle at him, which hit the lounge next to him and clattered to the floor. “Lube,” she explained, and nodded at the fake cock she’d thrown across the room. “I’ll leave that here for you. If you want to do yourself a favor, wait a few hours and then fuck yourself with it, with as much lube as you like.”

“Why would I do that?” Thor asked, both puzzled and slightly offended by the suggestion.

“Because today, I fucked you with your cock,” she said, and took a breath. “Tomorrow, I’m gonna fuck you with mine. You’re gonna want to be loosened up.”

Thor couldn’t help but steal a quick glance at her crotch. “ _You’ve_ got a—” he started to wonder aloud, but she cut him off.

“It comes with straps.”

“Oh,” said Thor, with a sinking feeling. He was disappointed that she already had plans to come back tomorrow, plans that still didn’t involve helping him escape. He knew he probably should have been devastated that she was already planning on fucking him again, with what he hoped would not be a worse device than the one she’d used today—but instead of feeling devastated, he thought maybe it was a good thing after all. As long as the Scrapper (someone he knew, someone from home, someone he felt like he trusted, despite her demonstrated willingness to hurt him) was required to ‘train’ him, he wouldn’t be available for other Sakaarians to purchase as a whore—he wouldn’t be sent to the Grandmaster’s revolting ‘birthday orgy’.

“Ok,” said Thor with a sigh, as the Scrapper hoisted her bag onto her shoulder. “See you tomorrow.”

She stood by the door for a slightly too-long moment, just staring at him, an emotion he really hoped wasn’t actually hatred burning in her eyes. “…Go fuck yourself,” she said at last.

The door slammed behind her.


	5. Can't say stop

Chapter 5: Can’t say stop

For a few minutes after the Scrapper left, Thor just sat where he was, unsure of what he was thinking about, if he was thinking about anything at all. What eventually rose to the surface of his mind was that he really wished he could get his hands free from behind his back. He awkwardly uncapped the little bottle she’d left him, and tried his best to work the slippery gel onto his hands and wrists, hoping that he could slide his hands out of the cuffs without activating the disk.

He could twist his wrists a little bit, but the second he made any real attempt to pull his hands free, the disk activated. He tried several more times, focusing first on his right hand and then on his left, going slow, going fast--each time dreading the inevitable zap a little more. After the fifth time the disk punished him for his efforts, he discovered the bottle was already empty, its contents slathered across his back. Now the stuff was sliding down the backs of his legs, and before long everything around him was shiny and frictionless.

It was a complete mess, but there was nothing he could do about it, so he tried his best to ignore it and not be too sensitive about the maddening way the cuffs now slipped against his lower back. He thought about trying to tear the cable from his collar out of the floor, but soon realized he should have tried that _before_ spilling an entire bottle of lube onto his hands; he couldn’t even properly grip the cable to yank it, his hands were so slick. Finally he managed to wrap the cable around his wrists in a double figure-eight, took a breath, and pulled on the cable hard enough to make the disk activate again, collapsing him flat on his face in an uncomfortably slippery puddle.

The disk shut off after a few seconds of pain and Thor stayed down, the side of his face now depressingly wet with lube from the floor. He wondered if he was missing any obvious way out of here. He thought about his brother, who would undoubtedly have a hundred magical means of escape. Loki had watched the fight with the Hulk. Did Loki know where Thor was now? The thought of Loki knowing was aggravating and a little depressing, but the thought of him _not_ knowing was a little bit sadder, because it meant that he’d eventually find out.

Thor was surprised away from his thoughts by the door opening again, revealing two insectoid aliens pushing a hovercart. “Oh, hello,” said Thor automatically, and noticed that these creatures, whatever their role, each had an obedience disk implanted on their thorax.

“Kyrykyyrrykyryk,” said the first buglike creature, waggling its antennae, and Thor shook his head, not understanding. “Kyryk, food, kyrrrykkyryk?” the alien tried again, and it seemed like a question.

“Are you asking if I _am_ food, or if I _want_ food?” Thor wondered, hoping the Allspeak would catch up with this new language soon. It seemed possible that these creatures might be pushing this cart around delivering meals, and Thor suddenly felt a twinge of hunger.

The second alien referenced a digital tablet, scrolling down through several pages worth of data with one spindly leg. Eventually it looked up at Thor and chirped, “Kyryk, what you are?”

Thor grinned, relieved that they could communicate after all. “I’m not food, if that’s what you wanted to know,” he said in his friendliest tone of voice.

“Sparkles, what type,” said the first alien, obviously not content with Thor’s answer. “What type animal you are?”

“Umm…” Thor frowned. “…Asgardian?” he ventured.

The two insectoids conferred with each other in a non-translatable language, the second one scrolling on its tablet and making frustrated little motions with its mandibles. Thor cocked his head and glanced at the tablet, and noted it was an illustrated index of humanoid species. “Asgardian not on list,” the second alien reported after a minute.

“Try _Æsir_?” Thor suggested. Korg had mentioned that Asgardians were known to exist on this world, though Thor hoped there had been relatively few of them.

The bugs chittered at each other again and the second one scrolled some more on the tablet, and found an entry. “Ok,” said the second alien, setting the tablet down. “Sparkles not get food.”

“Wait, why not?” Thor asked, baffled.

The creature partially untucked its wings, then folded them in again, which Thor interpreted as this species’ equivalent of a shrug. “Asgardian not need food; Sparkles not get food. Take five hundred years to starve Asgardian to death.”

“Five hundred years?!” Thor echoed, confused. He had no idea whether or not that was true—he doubted it, actually—but mostly he was concerned about what sort of experiment might have led anyone to such a conclusion. “But, I normally eat every day. Several times a day, whenever possible.” It occurred to him right away that maybe he shouldn’t have mentioned that, in case it sounded like bragging on a world where food was scarce.

The bugs both did the little shrugging motion with their wings. “Not here,” said the first bug, and they closed the door.

“…Can you help me get these cuffs off my hands?” Thor called out loudly, hoping maybe they could hear him through the door. He listened for a moment, but there was no response.

Thor sighed. He was alone and his skin was disgustingly slippery and now he was hungry. He’d been offered food with the gladiators, but when he’d asked Korg what was in it, Korg had said ‘protein’, in a softly apologetic way, and when Thor had pressed him for clarification Korg had said he didn’t really want to know—and one of the first things that Thor had learned about Sakaar was that they ate people here, which Thor was vehemently opposed to doing. So he figured that maybe he already knew what Korg was disinclined to tell him, and he’d skipped that meal. It was true that he was unlikely to starve to death anytime soon, and he’d experienced long periods without food before, but, bizarrely, being denied food now kind of… hurt.

Thor chuckled to himself, able to appreciate this absurdity: here he was, the God of Thunder, naked and bound, enslaved and… assaulted by someone who should have been protecting him—and he was sad to be denied his dinner. The little laugh he was having at his own expense began to catch in his throat, so he reminded himself that the food was probably just more of the stuff he didn’t want to eat anyway, the same questionable goo that had been offered to the gladiators. Thor would have to be a whole lot hungrier than he was now to contemplate eating what might be the remains of actual people, no matter how highly processed they might be.

Deciding he was not that hungry after all, Thor deliberately changed the subject in his mind. _Escape._ There had to be a way out of this, he just needed a little help. Immediately he thought of his oldest friends, the ones who had already traipsed from one side of the universe to the other and back to help him out of countless predicaments. He hadn’t heard from the Warriors Three since Loki’s funeral, which had been hosted by Loki himself, Thor now realized—and felt a little flash of fondness for his brother’s sheer audacity. ‘Odin’s’ eulogy really had been a little too fervent, now that Thor could think back on it. Then he remembered that his father was dead, and might not even get a funeral, and the barometric pressure in the room wavered slightly.

Recognizing that he was getting emotional, Thor shook the odd combination of relief (Loki wasn’t dead) and grief (Odin was) away. In any case, Thor was certain his loyal companions would come to his rescue now, if he could only get a message to them. 

And so of course he thought of Heimdall—everything had been happening too fast today, requiring all of his attention; contacting Heimdall hadn’t occurred to him until now. Thor closed his eyes and reached out with his mind, calling for the gatekeeper to see him.

When Heimdall didn’t answer, Thor felt the pressure in the room begin to drop. Now he was remembering that _dream_ that wouldn’t leave him alone. _Asgard in ruins._ Hela was there now—was there even an Asgard left? Thor supposed Heimdall’s failure to answer might mean he was preoccupied leading the fight against the Goddess of Death—Heimdall could see and hear everything all at once, but could only _do_ one thing at a time like anyone else. If he didn’t have time to talk to Thor, that just meant there were more important things he had to do.

Thor tried reaching out to Heimdall for a few more minutes, and then gave up. It was vastly more tiring than he remembered, trying to establish that connection; Sakaar must be very far away from Asgard indeed, a hundred times further away from his home than Thor had ever been before. Maybe it was even _too_ far away for Heimdall to see? No, that was impossible—but then he remembered what had happened to Mjolnir. Anything was possible. 

Resolving to contact Heimdall again later, Thor thought instead about his friends from Earth. He sensed the memory of Jane encroaching on his mind and didn’t want to think of her happy laughter, when she'd been--(smiling at him), but then he thought of her anyway and the atmospheric pressure in the room plummeted further. Thor felt the change and realized the collar hadn’t stopped it from happening, and was distracted then by wondering how low he could get that pressure to go—low enough to boil water at room temperature? Could he make it low enough—or high enough—to kill someone?

He spent a while focusing on fluctuating the pressure in the room, just because he could, and felt a little abashed for never determining the limits of these particular powers before. He’d always known a happy thought and corresponding burst of high pressure could clear out a raincloud when he wanted it to, but had never needed to know his exact limitations. After a while of testing himself now, he determined he could _not_ make the pressure change drastically enough to seriously hurt anyone with it. He wasn’t sure if he was disappointed or relieved.

Thoughts of Jane began to creep back in, so he tried to think of whatever was the opposite of tiny, gentle, bright little Jane, and he thought of the Hulk, of their fight in the arena. Had Hulk even recognized him out there? Thor knew he looked different, with his hair cut and without his normal cape and armor, without Mjolnir in his hand. But he and Hulk had known each other for over three years, working with Steve and Tony and the rest of the team. Bruce Banner certainly knew who Thor was—the two of them had spent time together, hanging out. Thor considered Bruce—and Hulk—to be his closest friend on the team.

A dozen memories of his time with the Avengers flooded back, training and fighting and sharing meals together. Thor recalled how the Hulk had improved his willingness to relinquish control to Bruce when necessary, with the help of the lullaby—the whole team had been trained on how to do it, after Bruce and Natasha had worked it out. In the arena there had been a second or two where Thor had been certain he was getting through to Hulk—getting through to Banner—but then he’d been wrong, and had been…

_Beaten._

Thor blinked and felt very foolish. How could he have believed the outcome of that fight had been anything but a defeat? Hulk had nearly obliterated him. He, Thor, had not won that fight.

He didn’t want that thought to sink in, but it was already there, unretractable. Hulk hadn’t cared that they were friends. Banner hadn’t heard a word he’d said. The lullaby hadn’t worked. He’d lost.

_I’ll win the next round,_ Thor thought about telling himself, but the pressure in the room stayed low.

Hours passed, or what felt like it, and the next visitor who stopped by was a bipedal lizard-like creature with beady black eyes, pushing a cart and tagged with a disk, just as the bug-creatures had been. “Cleaning,” the lizard announced.

“Oh, good, room service” Thor said in relief. “Do you have any towels? And, do you think you’d be able to take these cuffs off my—” the lizard clicked a button on a controller, and the cuffs fell to the floor.

“Thank you!” Thor exclaimed in surprise, bringing his hands around in front of himself at last. He rubbed his hands and wrists—they were still grossly slippery. “Thank you so much—” he was about to apologize for the ridiculous amount of lube on the floor when the alien held up a much more familiar-looking controller. “No, wait,” Thor said, realizing what was about to happen.

 

He woke up with a vaguely antiseptic taste in his mouth.

Thor now knew from multiple unpleasant incidents that waking up on Sakaar post-disk session was one of the most disorienting experiences. Had he been out for hours? An entire day? He did feel relatively better, maybe even completely healed, physically, from the fight and everything since. He thought to himself that at least he wasn’t in one of those chairs this time, gliding through the Grandmaster’s semi-hallucinatory introduction sequence. But then the rest of his mind caught up to him and he remembered he was already somewhere far worse than that.

He sat up slowly, feeling sure that he’d just had at least a few hours rest. The lizard-like alien and its cart were gone. Thor was still in the same windowless cell, but the floor and the furniture had been cleaned, and Thor’s skin had evidently been scrubbed as well. He was grateful for that--at least he wasn’t slippery anymore. And—his hands were free! The lizard alien must have taken the cuffs with it when it had left.

This improvement in his circumstances gave Thor a surge of hope—now he could fight, could defend himself. He could even kill, if he had to—but that thought vanished as the door to the cell opened. The Scrapper had returned. She had her duffle bag slung over her shoulder, feet in a too-wide stance. _Drunk._ He could smell the liquor on her from across the room.

His hopes fizzled away. If he was going to fight, he’d have to fight and kill _her_ first. His every instinct told him that he couldn’t kill a Valkyrie, that he didn’t even want to try.

“G’Morning, your majesty,” she slurred at him. He tilted his head.

“Is it?” he asked conversationally. “Morning, I mean?”

She shrugged and dropped her bag on the floor. “Don’t care,” she said, half-staggering towards him. “Gonna be a busy day for you. Three of the Madam’s regulars signed a deal, said you’re worth the risk. They’re taking you today. And I’ve got bad news.”

She stopped, zoned out, as if she’d forgotten what she’d been about to say. Thor’s face creased in apprehension at the idea that he was being taken today—he had hoped he would only have to deal with the Scrapper during his (hopefully) brief time here, not meet any actual customers.

“Bad news?” Thor prompted cautiously, trying his best to stay calm.

“Message from the boss,” the Scrapper said, not looking at him. “I’ll show it to you after.”

Thor tensed, and hated the prickle of anticipation running up his spine and down his limbs, knowing what he had to do. Once he had her in a chokehold he could get the fob device away from her, get the disk off his neck, break the collar. He’d be so quick—and with reflexes slowed by alcohol, she wouldn’t stand a chance.

She stared at him heavily for a minute, and it was like focus returned to her, focus nearly as clear as sobriety. “Unbelievable,” she muttered. “You’re going to fight me?”

Thor thought about being honest, then thought about lying, and wound up not saying anything, just staring back at her.

She rolled her eyes and pressed the button. “Hey,” she half-yelled at him, as he convulsed at her feet. “I asked you a question, whore. Are you gonna fight me?”

She released him from the disk, met his eyes. 

“Y-” he started to say, but she disked him again, drawing the rest of that word out into a scream.

“I said, _are you gonna fight me?_ ” she demanded, voice like iron now. This time when she let the pain stop, he didn’t say anything.

“Wrong fucking _answer_ ,” she yelled at him, and left him twitching and helpless for a minute, two minutes, three.

She turned the thing off. “You going to fight me now?” she asked again, as his little whines of pain subsided into silence.

“…No,” he said, keeping his eyes shut.

“I don’t believe you,” she warned, and he flinched and whimpered in expectation of a zap that didn’t come. “Listen to me—” she said urgently, her finger poised on the button. “Give up and go along with it already. It’ll hurt less than getting zapped over and over. They’re going to fuck you. You’re going to fuck them. It isn’t the worst thing, do you understand that? You still have—you still have choices here.”

He gave her the most incredulous look.

She shook her head, breathing faster as she spoke. “Look—you can play nice and get sent to the fans of the Contest who want the thrill of sleeping with a gladiator. Or, you can sulk and get assigned to the sort who get a kick out of having power over a big, strong chunk of muscle. Do you understand? Maybe neither option is what you want, but trust me, one is a lot more unpleasant than the other.”

“…I understand,” Thor said, voice low.

“Good.” She seemed to relax a little. She adjusted her grip on the fob device, but did not put it away. She looked him over, and began to take off her boots. “Sit on the chair,” she told him. “And get your cock up.”

He sat down, watching her solemnly as her pants followed her boots, discarded on the floor. Even though she hadn’t touched his cock at all yesterday, the memory of everything was carnal enough to provoke a reaction in him now, and if his body would do this naturally he decided he would let it, rather than make her force it with the disk. He tensed one hand around himself and sat there, unmoving, waiting for her.

Once she was naked from the waist down, she glared at him, at his motionless hand on his half-hard cock.

“You’re going to have to do better than that,” she murmured, and replaced his hand with her own, pulling at him, her fist clenched around him nearly too tight. “I want you hard,” she said, and Thor swallowed, and believed her, and got hard.

She didn’t waste any time straddling his lap, nudging her lips apart with the head of his cock. She had to hold onto his shoulder, to balance herself. For some reason that hand on his shoulder bothered him; it made him feel connected to her in a way that exceeded any mere act of sex. He wished she would at least look at his face now, at least meet his eyes before she used his body. But instead her gaze was locked down at the point of penetration, watching as she pushed herself onto him. 

“You don’t have to do this.” His voice was gravel in his mouth. He knew it was a lame and pointless thing to say, but he had to say something.

“Shut up,” she snapped, still staring down at his cock, making her body take it in. At last she grunted and bucked her hips, seating herself fully against him. Now that there was no more length of him to watch disappearing into her cunt, she finally met his eyes.

She felt so strong around him, so familiar. Asgardian, same as he was, strong as he was. Not like Jane, whom he’d loved so gently it had been its own kind of ecstasy—but he didn’t want to think about Jane. He broke eye contact with the Scrapper, made the air in the room shift in a way that brought goosebumps to his arms and legs—and to hers.

“Hey,” she warned, and grabbed him by the chin. “You need to give more than grudging cooperation with this. Pretend to get into it.” She rolled her hips, and he felt her getting wetter around him, felt himself bumping the furthest wall within her, stretching it. “Ask me if I like your big dick up in me,” she instructed.

He looked into her eyes again. “What’s your name?” he asked her instead.

“ _None of your business,_ ” she cooed at him, rocking on his lap.

“I’ll call you Valkyrie,” Thor said, and she paused—

And she zapped him with the disk, holding him up so he didn’t fall off the chair, bracing him with her legs astride his and her arms tight around him, the breastplate she was still wearing the only thing separating their chests from touching. His head pitched forward over her shoulder, and his cock was trapped firmly inside her, quivering along with the rest of him as she let him suffer.

“Got anymore stupid things to say to me?” she demanded.

“I’ll call you Valkyr--” Thor tried again, and was once again punished by the disk.

She released him. “ _Valk_ —” he said immediately, defiant. She zapped him.

“I’ll call you Val,” he said in a rush, and took a breath, his chest heaving.

“Fine,” she said at last. These repeated bursts of pain had him softening within her, so she rode him back to hardness, rough as she could. “I’ll call you _whore_ ,” she told him.

“Heh,” Thor said, and the corner of his mouth tilted. “Close enough.”

She stared at him, her eyes darkening in rage as she realized he’d just had the _cheek_ to make a joke about the pronunciation of his actual name. 

“Your first client today will be a woman,” she informed him, slowing her hips. He could feel his cock pressing her limits, felt her closing herself around him, tight. “Her mate was killed by the Champion, she wants to be fucked by someone the Champion couldn’t kill.”

Thor frowned, absorbing that information.

“You’ll fuck her like this, or any way she wants you to. And you won’t hurt her.”

Thor felt compelled to agree, on the basis that he couldn’t stand the thought of hurting anyone while fucking them, but agreement would also mean he’d accepted that he _would_ be fucking her; would be fucking someone who’d bought him for that purpose, which meant resigning himself to the fact that he was for sale. For sex.

“I won’t hurt her,” he heard himself say.

“Good.” Val took a breath, pulled herself off his cock, and turned herself around in his lap, her back now to his chest. She leaned forward, arching her back, her hands on his knees. “Put it up my ass,” she said over her shoulder. “Let’s go.”

Thor tensed for a second. “Just… like this?” he asked, disbelieving. Her ass was spread against his thighs, round and smooth and already _open_.

“It’ll work,” Val said, voice flat. “Go ahead.”

“I don’t think,” Thor began to disagree, but she reached her hand between her legs and around his cock and joined the tip of it to her asshole, opening her body to swallow him up before he could talk himself out of his arousal.

He watched in shock as the head went in, and felt queasy at how tight she was here, how small. Too small, for this, for him, though he knew such things were done all over the universe—it didn’t matter how common it was; it wasn’t what he wanted.

“Stop,” he gasped, and his hands found her hips, holding her up. “Stop, _stop._ ”

“You can’t say ‘stop’,” Val snapped, glancing back over her hunched shoulders. She was so strong, Thor saw, Thor _felt,_ she was strong enough to physically be lowering her ass onto his cock like this, actually overpowering his efforts to hold her up. Her hips moved down.

His cock itself looked like a column that ought to be holding her up all by itself, but instead it was going _into_ her. Straight up her ass. He felt sick.

He thought to himself that he could just stand up, make her fall off his lap. He could push her away, could easily separate their bodies—just stand up, pick her up, throw her aside. It should be so easy. He could make her knock him out, make her use the disk again and again until she finally accepted he wasn’t going to…

But then of course he already was; he was doing this. And even as he thought of all the things he could do to stop her, he also couldn’t do any of them. Her ass was halfway down his cock already when she hissed in pain.

“You’re fucking big,” she muttered at him.

“I know,” he said helplessly.

“Yeah, I know you know,” she replied, breathing hard. “But I’ve still had twice as much cock as you’ve got. Pull my ass down and fuck me.”

“No,” said Thor.

She whipped her head over her shoulder to glare at him in just pure ire. “Yes,” she commanded. “Your second appointment today is with a man, same sad story—his partner was killed by the Hulk, and you weren’t. I don’t know how he wants you, but if he wants you up his ass I need to make sure you can fucking get there.”

“I can get there,” Thor said numbly. “As long as he’s a bit bigger than you.”

She narrowed her eyes, considering that, and slowly raised her ass off his cock, squeezing him the whole way out. “So that’s your thing, is it?” she wondered, climbing off his lap. “Dainty maidens don’t do the trick for the great big God of Thunder--you like ‘em big? You may regret that soon enough.” 

She picked up her bag, unzipped it, finding the cock she’d promised him yesterday. It was half again as large as his own.

“I’ve loved women who were smaller than you are,” Thor said, catching his breath. “But gently. Not…like that.”

Val shook her head, already stepping into the harness, sliding the thing up into place against her crotch. “Nobody rents a whore from the Grandmaster’s Playhouse for _‘gently’_ ,” she told him, and cinched the straps tight around her thighs, around her hips. “My turn now… bend over that thing there.”

Thor took a few more breaths, hoping his brain would catch up with everything soon, hoping he’d finally find some way out of this. Overwhelmed or not, his eyes were able to appreciate the visual effect in front of him now, the thick curve of the cock she’d strapped to herself, which matched the black leather of the breastplate she was still wearing—she looked beautiful like this. Ruthless, savage even--but beautiful all the same. It might have been a strange thing to recognize, considering what she’d done to him, what she was about to do to him again, were acts of inestimable evil. But he recognized it anyway—and he wanted her to know, so he told her.

“…You’re beautiful.”

“ _Shut up,_ ” she replied, furious. “And bend the fuck over. This is happening to you.”

Thor believed her again, and obeyed her again, leaning over the furniture where she wanted him. She was uncapping another little bottle now, drizzling lube onto the front half of her cock, smearing it with her hand until the whole thing glistened.

“Who’s the third?” Thor wondered quietly, as she decided not to waste the lube she’d gotten on her fingers. He spread his legs a little, trying to get comfortable. “You said three regulars signed a deal. Who’s the third?”

She drew her fingers out, wiping shiny stripes across his flank. “The third’s a retired gladiator,” she said in a leaden voice. “He misses the fighting but is too old and cowardly to get back in the ring. So he rents former gladiators from here. And,” she stopped, and Thor felt the firm head of her cock pressing in, and closed his eyes.

But then she was holding still, waiting for something. “…And what?” he dared to ask.

“…And he’s gonna try to kill you,” she said, and still didn’t move her cock. She was poised on the edge of him, where another half-inch push would have her sliding in deep. “Which is why I have to…” she stopped talking again, and still didn’t move.

She was quiet for long enough that Thor looked over his shoulder at her. He couldn’t see where her cock was matched up to his ass, but he could tell that’s what she was staring at, just fixated on that point, that intersection between them.

“…you don’t have to,” Thor said after a minute.

She was jolted out of her trance. “What?” she asked, defensive. “I have to make sure you won’t die, no matter what this sick fuck does to you. Don’t you get it? I have to make sure you’re broken in for it, ready for it. Make sure you know how to cope with the thought of it so you don’t do something stupid.”

“Val,” Thor said to her over his shoulder. “You don’t have to.”

She hesitated another instant and then pulled her cock away. “But I already did,” she muttered to herself. And then, quieter: “Fuck this. Fuck it. I’m done.”

Thor took a deep breath and eased himself up, turning around to face her. She was already undoing the straps, her face blank, operating on autopilot, packing up her bag. She pulled her pants and boots back on, business-like, efficient. Thor wasn’t sure what to say to her, if anything.  
He remembered that yesterday she had said not to thank her until it was over—and he sensed it was over, now.

“Thank you,” he said.

She was typing a code into a hand-held communications device, and looked up at him in what was practically contempt. “For what?” she scoffed.

“For… changing your mind,” Thor hoped aloud. “And helping me escape?”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m done with you. I’m out. Anyone that wants you will just have to sign a waiver saying they acknowledge that they risk their own death by fucking you. People here are crazy enough to do that. I might’ve rented you out myself for the challenge of it if I hadn’t just gotten you for free.” 

Thor furrowed his brow at that, hoping it wasn’t true. She reached out and handed him the comm device, pointing to a certain button. “Here’s the bad news I mentioned. Push this to play the message.”

Thor started to ask a question, but she ignored him, heading for the door. She paused before exiting. “Whatever happens,” she said abruptly, and looked him over one last time, as if she expected she might never see him again. “Don’t,” she paused, as if she couldn’t manage to get the rest of her thought into the air.

Before Thor could ask her any more questions, she left.


	6. At your service

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thor meets his first customers and things get rough.

Chapter 6: At your service

Thor was alone again, and a little bit reluctant to play the message that Val had left for him. The fact that three people had already signed up to use him seemed like bad news enough; if there was _worse_ news, he wasn’t sure he wanted to hear it. So he turned the little comm device over in his hands, studying it, wondering if he could take it apart or repurpose it somehow, maybe even use it to get a message off-world.

He fiddled with it half-heartedly for a while, pacing back and forth in his cell and finally decided he had to know. He pushed the button she’d shown him, and a little holographic video popped up into the air.

“Hellooo?” rolled the voice of the Grandmaster, his face becoming visible in the video. “Is this thing on? It is? Oh good. Hey there, Sparkles, how’s it going? Getting all settled in over there? No need to answer, this is, like, pre-recorded. Not a live call. Anywho, I’ve got a little something I’d like to discuss with you, concerning your frankly appalling behavior—killing five guards. Mh-mh-mhh. Topaz told me all about it, and, just to recap where we’re at: our problems here are that we need to make sure you won’t be killing any of your customers, and, we need to make sure you don’t need to be _disked out_ every time somebody wants to fuck you. In other words, no more lightning, no more fightning—ha, I said ‘fightning’, that’s not a word—you need to relax and participate. Go with the flow!”

Thor’s skin prickled in revulsion; the Grandmaster’s perennially _casual_ tone was infuriating. The less seriously this perverted dictator wanted to treat the subject of sexual slavery on his planet, the more Thor wanted to lash out in protest.

“I heard they’re doing the best they can over there, at the House,” the Grandmaster continued in the video, his voice now condescendingly apologetic. “Got like, a little power collar on you, which sounds super cute, and my favorite Scrapper, 142, is signed up for some training sessions, right? Lucky you, you know what I mean? Like, why wasn’t I invited, at least to watch—oh well, I know I’ll get my turn soon enough.”

Thor’s leg twitched, and he felt a storm rising in his chest. Everything that had already happened to him didn’t matter; his resolve returned and strengthened. Thor would _not_ be a whore for this man. It was not happening. It was not possible.

_Mjolnir,_ he remembered again, and his stomach clenched. _He had no idea what was possible._ Anything he had might be taken. Anything he had might be broken. 

“I know, I know,” the Grandmaster said placatingly. “You’re not exactly on board with that idea yet, are you? But you will be in a minute. Because, as it turns out, I have found a solution to these problems, and it’s right over here—come look at this!”

The video panned out, showing the Grandmaster standing in a corridor, beside an utterly nondescript wall. He had the Melt-stick in his hand. “What have we here,” the Grandmaster mused, and tapped the Melt-stick against the wall, which shimmered into nothingness, revealing a different wall behind it. “Was that—an illusion?” the Grandmaster wondered theatrically for his audience’s benefit. “Now who would have the nerve to put up a silly illusion like that, in my own palace, without permission?”

Thor suddenly did not want to know. The Grandmaster was waving the Melt-stick at the newly uncovered wall. “And what is this? Is this actually some other kind of magical barrier? Amazing. Amazingly _rude._ And so...” he touched the second wall with the Melt-stick, and it flickered, but held, and Thor felt hopeful—but then the Grandmaster shoved the Melt-stick forward. There was a flash from the orange globe at the end of it, and the wall dissolved.

_No,_ Thor thought, growing cold in dread.

“Hmm,” said the Grandmaster, studying what he’d found behind that second layer. “Would you look at that. Yet another wall that is just not up to code. Nope, can’t have that.” He used the Melt-stick a third time, and the third magical barrier crumbled away.

“My, my, my,” the Grandmaster exclaimed slowly, moving forward into the dark space he’d just discovered. “Looks like somebody has tried to make a silly little _hiding place._ You know what this reminds me of? When, like, one of those smaller persons, a freshly hatched person—ah, Topaz, what is that called again?”

“A child,” provided Topaz’s flat voice, off camera.

“Yeah, that’s it—a child! When a child gets their hands on, say, a box, and crawls inside it, and thinks it’s a castle? In magic, this is the equivalent of that. And here we have—yup, I was right, another rudely defensive spell, that someone has constructed right under my nose! Ugh, I can’t stand it.” He waved the Melt-stick and it was like a black fog dissipated, exposing the unmistakable form of Thor’s brother, curled up asleep on a bed in the middle of a tiny room.

_Get out of there,_ Thor begged silently, watching the video message with ice running through his veins. _Come on, Loki, get up, get up and get out of there!_

“Aww, look,” the Grandmaster’s voice went down, until it was nearly a whisper, nearly a purr. “Look who we found in here. Sleeping—and yeah, I’ve got him in a little sleeping-spell, so, he’s out like a light, I promise. Won’t feel a thing.”

Thor clenched his fists so hard that lightning snapped through his bones, streaking up his arms, and leeched away from him into the collar.

“Topaz, bring that over here, get a close-up. Look at this sweet little face. He says he’s _adopted,_ huh—I’m thinking about adopting him myself. He tried to hide from me. Adorable. Hmmm! But can you believe he’s curled up down here in this closet instead of in the fancy apartment I gave him? Goodness. I could almost feel offended.”

The Grandmaster brandished the Melt-stick, and Thor held his breath in horror as the Grandmaster rested the orange globe on Loki’s temple.

“Now then, Sparkles.” The Grandmaster’s voice became a little more business-like, a little less whispery. “About that solution to the problems I mentioned. I hate to be so _contractual_ about this stuff, but, uh, yeah… you’re gonna be the best little whore you can be, or, well, you can probably figure it out from there, right? Come on, this is easy—this is as obvious as it gets, right?? If I hear even one rumor of you not putting out or you being less than extremely excited about your assignment, less than utterly grateful for my generosity, well then; goodnight sweet little brother, in like, a really smelly, bubbly, _melty_ kind of way.”

The Grandmaster paused for effect, then lifted the Melt-stick away from Loki’s face, adjusting the collar on his gold-and-blue robes and grinning at Topaz. “Did we get it? Was that good?” he asked, the video still rolling.

“That was good,” Topaz’s voice replied. “How do you want me to deliver it?”

“Oh, I know, give it to 142. She can be the messenger. In case he, you know, shoots the messenger.” The Grandmaster looked directly at the camera. “Which he definitely won’t do, because, that would be out of line. And I’d hate for him to wind up out of line before my good buddy Skoro gets a go at him.”

“Skoro the washed-up gladiator?” Topaz asked.

“Hey, hey, he prefers the term ‘retired’,” the Grandmaster scolded. “But yeah, that’s the guy. Wow, what’s with the face, Tope? It’s not like you to disapprove.”

“You sure you want to let that guy have a whore before you? He’s got a reputation. Might not leave him intact.”

The Grandmaster chuckled darkly. “Didn’t know you cared, Topaz. But anyway I’ll have a chat with the old boy, let him know what I want for my birthday.” He winked at the camera. “…Which is _you_ , Sparkles. Just you. So you be good out there, okay? All right. See you soon.” He nodded to Topaz, and the video message ended, fizzling out.

Thor crushed the comm device in his fist, his whole body hot with disgust, with outrage, with certainty: whatever Thor might have done, to resist, to fight, to make himself either too dangerous or too dull to be desirable—those half-formed plans were over with now. The Grandmaster had gotten his number and brought Thor to heel, no question about it. Thor was committed now.

The Grandmaster would _not_ be melting his brother. No matter what it took.

 

Thor was a little surprised, later that day, to be given his clothes back—but of course the customers tonight were all fans of the Contest; they wanted him as he’d been in the arena. He tried to think of it as going into battle—putting his armor on, as he’d done a hundred thousand times before. But it felt more like putting on a costume, clothes that didn’t belong to him even though he’d been wearing them just the day before. At least it was better than being naked.

They took him out of his cell, which was another surprise, and transported him across the city to his first client’s residence, the woman whose mate had been killed by the Champion. She was a graceful, gray-skinned alien with a labyrinth of white markings painted on her face, and her home was palatial, full of fountains, sculptures, and docile slaves. Thor naturally took his place in the center of every room he was led through, his shoulders thrown back. He was handsome and polite. She was wealthy and grieving and uninterested in talking to him; she only wanted to feel something _strong_ and imagine that strength withstanding the force of the Champion.

And Thor was plenty strong. He spent the better part of three hours inside her, holding her up while she lost control and called him the name of her dead lover, while she cursed him for not killing the Hulk, while the core of her alien sex contracted around him in pulses, shockingly dry. He did whatever she wanted him to do—but he kept his seed to himself, which she finally noticed and remarked upon. She suggested they use the other function of the disk; he declined, but she scowled at him and used it anyway. For long moments Thor shuddered, desperately commanding himself to come, to get it over with. But it didn’t work, and she eventually she turned the disk off, saying she’d thought of something better.

There were two female slaves in the room, of the same gray-skinned species, who had already been directed to bring water for drinking and cool cloths for wiping away excess heat. Now they were told to strip and join Thor and their mistress on the bed. Side-by-side the slaves lay down, silently holding hands, and Thor was ordered to fuck them both until they cried.

Thor frowned, dismayed that this bereaved woman would offer up her serving girls so callously. Thor didn’t know what species of alien they were, but the two slaves clinging to each other’s hands seemed young, and their mistress seemed middle-aged; it struck him that on a healthier world they might have been her daughters. “…Are you sure you wouldn’t like me to fuck _you_ until you cry, instead?” Thor asked her. He knew it was a risk, that he might be perceived as disobedient for asking, but he had to try. The young slaves seemed... tense.

“I’ve been crying for months,” said the woman. “I would see the tears of others instead.”

Thor looked down at the two slate-gray faces of the slaves, which had matching white markings painted on their cheeks. If not sisters, these were at least friends. Their obedience disks, Thor noticed, had been carefully centered between their breasts. “…Will tears from pleasure be all right?” he dared to hope.

Their mistress laughed, an alien sound like static. “I doubt you’ll get any of those kinds of tears out of these two,” she assured him, stroking one of the girls on the hip. “They’re new.”

_New._ A terrible darkness flooded Thor’s heart. He didn’t have any peculiar sentiments about virgins or anything; they were just people—Thor had been a virgin himself once and there was nothing wrong or special about it. But these two girls, virgins or not, were ‘new’ enough to seem more afraid than resigned to their fate. If they’d shown resignation, he might have met that with his own resignation, but their fear lit the fire for Thor that this was _wrong._ Thor couldn’t do this--it wasn’t right, it wasn’t acceptable, it wasn’t how any world of sapient creatures was supposed to work. His mind went blank for a second and then roared to life like an engine, searching for a way out.

_Do whatever she wants,_ Thor thought to himself. _Be the best little whore you can be._ He cast a freshly desperate look at the woman who’d bought him. _I only want to feel something strong,_ she had said. And then he recalled Val’s voice saying: _be good at it._

“I don’t particularly care for ‘new’,” Thor said, making up his mind.

“Excuse me?” said the woman, frowning.

Thor locked eyes with her. “I’m here for you, not for them,” he said, voice low. “Get on your hands and knees.”

For a split second she looked astonished, like she might just disk him out on the spot, but then he saw her chest flutter, saw her face darken with lust, and she turned around and spread her knees wide.

Soon enough the young slaves were forgotten, and their mistress was sobbing into the pillows, and Thor felt like an animal.

“Come, _come,_ come inside me,” she begged, and Thor did exactly that—and she screamed as if he’d burned her.

“ _Gods, gods, I can feel it,_ ” she wailed.

Thor eased back, but didn’t slide free until he was sure she’d stopped shivering. When she finally opened her eyes and looked around at him, wrecked with tears, he was ashamed of the wonder in her expression. “…I’ve never felt like that before,” she said to him, and then she sent him away.

 

Confined in the transport vehicle, he started to worry that maybe he’d misjudged, maybe he’d hurt her, maybe she was already complaining to the Madam, and any moment now he’d hear the Grandmaster’s curling voice denouncing him. But he was taken back to the Playhouse, bathed, re-clothed, force-fed some kind of energy drink, and taken out again.

The second client met him at the door of much more modest quarters, and Thor tried not to be surprised that this man—an alien with tan skin and orange stripes on his arms—was a handbreadth taller and substantially more muscular than Thor himself. He looked Thor over from head to toe and also seemed to be repressing some surprise. He accepted the Playhouse’s custom-made fob device from Thor’s handlers, accepted the coiled-up end of the cable from the collar, and led Thor straight to his bedroom.

“You’re smaller than I thought you’d be,” the alien muttered disappointedly, unbuckling Thor’s armor with steady hands.

“Oh. Uh, sorry,” Thor said with an amiable shrug. This client seemed friendly enough so far. Thor attempted to smile at him with the sides of his eyes.

“You looked like a _god_ in that arena,” the client said in reverence, calmly pulling the cuirass free of Thor’s chest.

Thor stilled, feeling the weight of that word, that title, like a precious heavy stone that had been mined away from him. It was just an expression, now—Thor knew what he meant. He’d looked powerful, that was all. 

“Thanks,” Thor said, accepting the compliment. 

His client flashed a smile at him, and continued to undress him, with nearly as much formality and respect as a servant at court. Would this be hero-worship, then? He’d been treated with awe plenty of times before, perhaps more often than not, when it came to sex. Thor began to hope that this encounter might feel less like _use_ and more like…appreciation, though he felt a little guilty for hoping for that.

“I’ll have your mouth,” the client said mildly, removing his own clothes and seating himself on the edge of the bed. Thor nodded, getting into place between the man’s knees.

Broad hands dropped onto Thor’s shoulders and squeezed in a comrade-like way, and Thor felt almost at ease. He imagined this colossal alien had been a gladiator himself, and a warrior before that—he certainly had the form for it, and the carriage of a person who was conscious of their own size and strength, the same as Thor himself.

Thor reached his hand around the alien’s cock, which was plainly shaped, tan on the top and orange beneath. He gave it a tug and a narrow strip of ridges appeared down each side, rough against his palm. It was a little bit weird, but so what—Thor could easily fit it in his mouth.

The client sighed as Thor swallowed him down without a fuss. “Now,” he mused, and brought his palm to Thor’s cheek, his fingers almost affectionately brushing Thor’s scalp behind his ear. “You just look like a whore.”

There was a beat on some drum at that, somewhere in the depths of him, and Thor felt his perception of the situation adjust, like switching a filter to change the color of the light. But Thor was too committed now to react with anger or shame, too focused to freeze up at the abrupt shift from affirming remarks to degrading ones. Instead he pulled back around the cock in his throat, his tongue cradling the orange underside of the thing until it slipped out of his mouth. He looked up at his client.

“…At your service,” Thor said, and sucked him back down.

“Mmm, yes.” The alien sighed again, smoothly pushing forward with his hips, a motion Thor easily matched with his head. “I’ve paid a lot of money for this.”

Thor wasn’t in a position to comment on that, but he was aware that he needed to make this experience worth whatever had been paid. He knew most people got a thrill out of eye contact during this sort of thing so he tried it, looking the long, long way up to his client’s face.

The alien was smiling at him, but the expression seemed haunted, hollow. Thor started to feel a little worried, but kept sucking in earnest, hoping he really was as good at this as he believed. The big palm on his cheek moved around to the back of his head, and the alien’s other hand now reached in to stroke Thor’s neck, placidly running a thumb over the collar and carefully exploring each structure under the skin.

“I knew it would be worth it,” the alien mused softly. Then he paused, and Thor dared to think that maybe this was going well.

“…to see what kind of slut would be friends with the Hulk.”

A warning flashed in Thor’s mind, and the hand around the back of his skull tightened, pulling his face in close. The cock in his mouth jabbed down his throat. _Don’t choke don’t choke,_ he thought desperately, trying to stay calm.

“Choke,” came the instruction, as if the man had read his mind. “Choke on it. It will please me.”

It wasn’t even a conscious decision—instinct took over. Thor was stronger than this huge creature, and the disk wasn’t on. He choked and pushed himself away, stumbling backwards, coughing. He tasted blood and realized that those alien ridges had grown rougher, and had torn the corner of his mouth as he’d pulled free. A tiny tear—barely a split lip. Thor wiped his mouth on his hand. His client was still sitting patiently on the edge of the bed, unconcerned that Thor had escaped from his grasp.

“…You lost someone,” Thor said lowly, recalling what Val had said. _Same sad story._ “To the Hulk?”

“I lost the _only_ one.” His huge shoulders rippled, their fiery stripes catching the light. “We were partners in the Contest, as well as partners in life.”

Thor shook his head, a cautious, pained motion. “…Hurting me won’t bring them back.”

Those great shoulders were now still as stone. “I know,” the alien said. “But in my culture we have a custom of proxy. A man may stand for his friend and be punished for his crimes. When I heard that you called the Hulk your friend, I knew I had to have you. On your knees before me, spread open and suffering.”

Thor backed up another few steps, trying to process the situation. “…Surely in that custom, the one standing in proxy has to agree to it first?”

The alien shook his head. “Your claim of friendship is your consent. Such claims have deep meaning to my people.”

“But…the proxy thing, that’s in your culture, not mine,” Thor protested. "I _do_ understand the concept, trust me--the whole, 'take me in place of my friend' thing is something I understand maybe a little bit better than most but, for revenge against the Hulk, you can’t expect me to let you…”

“You are a whore I have purchased,” the alien reminded him. “It is exactly what I expect.”

Thor swallowed, tasting the last hint of blood. His lip had already healed. “All right, all right,” he said breathlessly, knowing that at this point he was stalling. “Tell me about your partner. I’d like to know whose death I’m being punished for.”

The alien gave him another joyless smile. “Suck me while I do.”

Thor considered his options, remembered the Valkyrie’s ‘training’, her harsh warnings, and especially the Grandmaster’s threat. He moved across the room, resuming his place. On his knees.

“Go on,” his client directed, and Thor opened his mouth, taking care to avoid the hardened ridges as best he could. After a moment, the alien sighed in pleasure, and cupped both hands loosely around Thor’s head. Thor tensed, expecting to be pulled in again, but the hands stayed neutral, letting Thor set the pace.

“…We were a skillful team, in the Contest,” the alien began to reminisce. “But doomed to eventual slaughter. Then we were offered a deal. If one of us faced the Champion, the other would go free.” His voice trailed off, and Thor sucked him with as much enthusiasm as he dared, hoping the man would continue his story.

After a moment with his eyes closed, he seemed to remember where he’d left off. “I rigged the lots we drew so it would be me who died. But my wife took my armor and disguised herself as me, and switched our places. And the Hulk tore off her arms and threw them into the stands. She screamed for forty heartbeats. And then he tore off her head.”

Thor winced, extremely aware of this alien’s hands on his own head now, much more dangerous than the serrated sides of the cock in his mouth. The Hulk that Thor had known on Earth had always seemed a bit more protective of women than of men, and it was painful to imagine him butchering someone’s beloved wife. On the other hand, a wife who could wear this alien’s armor and pass herself off as her enormous husband might not have been recognizable to the Hulk as a woman—and also, she would have had weapons and been attacking him. So perhaps Thor could imagine the Hulk killing her after all. He pulled back, slowly, until he could speak.

“I’m sorry,” Thor said, voice grave.

“Then accept your fate,” the alien challenged.

“…I’ll try,” Thor agreed. A strong hand wrapped itself around his neck, the other holding the back of his skull, recreating the hold the alien had on him before. Thor forced himself to relax.

“I’ll choke you out like this,” the alien informed him. “And fuck your throat as I like it.”

Thor felt something shiver in his chest, something like a protest, something like fear.

“Don’t worry. I can’t afford to kill you,” the alien said, and began, carefully, to press his thumb against Thor’s carotid artery. “You’re far too expensive.”

_Blood choke,_ Thor realized. He could fight this pressure, he could win this fight. But he closed his eyes and welcomed the dark.

 

When the handlers finally returned to collect him at the end of the allotted time, Thor’s body was aflame with pain, and his mind was numb. He’d been strangled out of consciousness repeatedly, each time informed beforehand of his assailant’s intentions. He’d been pinned on his stomach and sawed bloody, rubbed raw until he tore. It stung, searing hot; but what hurt the most had been the alien cursing him at the end. In theory he’d actually been cursing the Hulk, but the words fell heavy on Thor’s heart.

_Everything you ever loved_ , he had said. _See it taken away._

Thor remembered the alien’s voice, cold and calm. Thor’s blood sticky on his thighs. _Everyone who ever loved you. See them die._

He had been conscious for the curses, but he’d also sort of drifted out, and started seeing scenes from that recurring dream: _Asgard in ruins. Asgard in flames._ It was horrifying, it was depressing, it was surreal.

He had to escape from this place. But he was hauled back to the Grandmaster’s whorehouse. Once again he was stripped and bathed. A medic gave him a cursory inspection and put him on a one-hour hold for healing. The damage had only been skin-deep, ‘minor’ according to the medic, but still an hour felt laughable. Thor would have thought he needed a year. Then he started to overhear some chatter about the next person who’d paid for his company—the ex-gladiator known as ‘Skoro’ was already demanding a partial refund, because his whore was going to be an hour late to his appointment. Skoro was sure to be in an even worse mood than usual. Thor got a few looks of sympathy.

Thor slumped against the wall in the holding cell where they’d left him, trying to collect his wits. Each minute that passed brought him closer to the next horror, to the man Val had warned him would actually try to kill him. He didn’t want to think about what that would be like.

He tired focusing on his pain; it wasn’t that bad, really. He’d been hurt far worse. There was the time he’d been flogged after being mistaken for a pirate; Loki had thankfully been able to clear up the misunderstanding. Then there was the time Loki had set Thor on fire; it had been excruciating but a mistake and Loki had honestly seemed sorry. And of course there was the time Thor had been _killed,_ as a mortal, struck down by the Destroyer. Loki’d been sorry for that one too, Thor hoped. But then he frowned—because he remembered the pain of his mother’s death, and the pain of Loki’s ‘death’ so soon after. That had been the worst. Worse than all the burns and bruises and stabbings put together. _Why,_ Thor wondered of his brother, his heart feeling more torn than any other part of him. _Why did you do that to me?_

These were dark thoughts, unhelpful thoughts, so Thor cast desperately around in his mind for something better to focus on. This planet was sick, it was foul—a cesspit. But there were so many people here, Thor thought, struggling against despair. There had to be some good—it couldn’t be all bad. He thought of Val, how she’d told him he couldn’t say stop, but she _had_ stopped, all the same. That had to count for something. And the girls on the bed today, holding hands—they cared for each other, that was clear. That was wholesome. Even their mistress, cold-hearted as she seemed, had been genuinely grieving. There was no grief in the universe without love before it. No matter what their other failings, their other crimes, it was clear that some of the people here were at least capable of love. The wife who’d taken her husband’s place at the hands of the Hulk, that had been love, Thor was sure. That had been a noble act, even if it ended in tragedy.

So there was good here. Small portions, maybe, but worth remembering. Not that it would help Thor much if he was about to be raped to death. The Grandmaster had said he would remind Skoro that he wanted Thor for his birthday, so Thor supposed that meant he wouldn’t actually be killed. Having his life spared just for the Grandmaster’s pleasure, however, wasn't much to look forward to.

The more he thought about what awaited him, the more he felt like… he couldn’t do it. It was an odd feeling, one he couldn’t remember feeling before. It was like panic, mixed with a sense of hopelessness. He felt…lost. He couldn’t deal with this, couldn’t face it. Not another violent ex-gladiator out for his blood, out for his pain. Not today, not again so soon after what he’d just experienced. He needed to sleep, he thought wildly. Yes, maybe he just needed to sleep. And go home.

_No one leaves,_ that soothing voice had said, during that bizarre introduction to this planet. _No one leaves,_ Val had repeated to him, as if she really believed it. But Thor could not stay here—he could not deal with this, and _he had to escape_.

Suddenly his hour-long reprieve was up, and he was paralyzed by the disk and dragged from the cell, shackled into the transport and shuttled across the city for the third time that night.

He knew it was foolish and pointless, but he put up a fight anyway, as he was taken out of the vehicle and dragged towards the door of the residence. This place was the Sakaarian equivalent of a penthouse apartment, everything made of black glass and slightly rusted metal.

The door opened and revealed the hideous form of Skoro himself, a head taller than Thor and more than four times his size around the middle, his skin pale and half-rotten, crisscrossed many times over with scars and drooping from the decrepit remains of what had once been mountains of muscle. He was wearing about a dozen large medallions and three or four large, extravagantly decorated belts, one on top of the other from his hips to his chest. Thor stared up at him in horror, and Skoro stared back.

“Well!” the old gladiator boomed at last, his lips curling back from rows of broken teeth. He glared over Thor’s head at the handlers. “Took you long enough. Tell that scrawny disease-ridden Madam of yours that she won’t see a single unit over half-price for this appalling unprofessionalism. And what sort of insult is _this?_ ” He reached out a withered hand and pointed at the cable attached to Thor’s collar. “Does that bitch believe I can’t handle my own whores? She puts collars on them to tame them for me? Remove this ridiculous device immediately.”

The handlers shifted uncomfortably, looking back and forth, uncertain if they should comply.

“ _Immediately!_ ” Skoro roared at them, and then they scrambled to obey. 

The collar was unfastened and removed with the help of a fob device, and Skoro stood aside so the handlers could push Thor through the doorway. The handlers stepped back and the door slammed shut, locking Thor inside the apartment.

Thor stood facing the monstrous old gladiator, who looked back at him with an unnervingly unhappy expression—and then the grotesque body of Skoro shimmered away, reforming into the shape of Thor’s brother.

They stared at each other for another beat. “Oh, Thor,” Loki sighed at last, sounding oddly forlorn.

Thor dropped to his knees right there in front of his brother, and he hunched over with his elbows pulled in close to his hips, burying his face in his hands. There was a long moment of silence, and Thor’s shoulders trembled as he breathed in choppy gasps. He could feel Loki’s eyes on him.

“…I am truly sorry,” Loki said at last. Thor’s head snapped up.

“Loki. _Loki._ What the fuck.” Thor swore, voice shaking. “ _What the fuck._ ”

Loki sighed. “I’ll explain everything. First of all—I am genuinely sorry that you’ve been put in this position. This never should have happened to you.”

Thor shook his head, getting back up to his feet. Loki slid a step backwards, and then looked a little guilty for doing so. Thor didn’t care.

“Let’s go,” Thor said hoarsely. “Right now, and get out of here.”

Loki swallowed, and shook his head, a tiny motion.

“Loki,” said Thor, voice rising. “You have to help me escape, right now. We have to go home.”

Now Loki winced, and his eyes tightened, and Thor knew his brother was serious. “I can’t, Thor,” Loki said softly. “I’m sorry—I want to, I swear to you. But we can’t. Not yet.”

“Why _not?_ ” Thor demanded. He rubbed at his neck, finally free of that blasted collar, though still implanted with the disk. “What are you doing? Why can’t we just _go?_ ”

“Well, for one thing, I’m not…” Loki said awkwardly, and paused, and Thor looked him up and down and groaned.

“Ugh, you’re not here, are you? You’re not even really here.”

Loki sighed. “I’m not. It seems I’ve been placed under house arrest, in a manner of speaking. The Grandmaster is playing a game with me—a game he’s going to lose.”

Thor shook his head in disbelief. “No, he’s already won. He caught you, asleep—had you under some kind of spell. And he had his stupid Melt-stick and was going to kill you—he sent me a message.”

Loki rolled his eyes. “Yes, he has trapped my body, but not my mind. And it’s my mind he really wants. Every few hours he gets distracted and drops the spell and it gives me a window to find a new hiding place.”

Thor just stared at him. “…Hide and seek,” he recalled from Earth. “You’re playing _hide and seek_ with that madman? An hour ago I was being _fucked_ senseless by someone whose wife was ripped to bits by the Hulk, and you’re playing hide and seek?!”

His brother had sense enough to at least looked appalled. A few seconds passed, and Thor ran his hands through his crudely shortened hair. “…Just break the damn spells, Loki, and let's go home.”

A smile appeared on Loki’s face that made Thor honestly believe that Loki wanted to do exactly that. But then the expression faded, replaced by the familiar cool resolve of Loki on the warpath. “…I wish I could make you understand,” Loki said in a low voice. “And I am going to help you. But, unfortunately, for now, you have to stay put.”

Thor wheeled to face him, anger surging. “In a whorehouse,” he clarified.

His brother winced again, but nodded. “…This is the best I can do at the moment,” he said, spreading his hands to indicate the apartment around them. “You’ve got the rest of the night off, you’re safe here for now. And I did you a favor, I killed that dreadful ‘Skoro’ character. So at least...”

Thor’s jaw practically dropped. “Oh no, no—you killed him?!”

Loki nodded. “His days of torturing slaves are over. You’re welcome.”

“Loki, no—if the Grandmaster thinks I’ve killed a customer, he’s going to kill _you!_ ”

“Oh, don’t worry,” Loki said, flashing a grin. “The rest of Sakaar will think you killed old Skoro and they’ll thank you for it, but the Grandmaster will know that it was me, not you. The rules he’s set for you only apply to you, not to me. He’s going to be delighted that I was able to sneak out from under his sleeping spell and intervene here to spare you from that… brutality. As long as I’m clever about it, I’m sure I’m free to kill as many of your clients as I want.”

“Yeah, well,” Thor muttered. “You already missed a few.”

Loki’s face fell a little. “…Would it help if I…got rid of them now?”

“No,” Thor decided loudly. “I don’t think it would help at all.”

“Look, I’m sorry about those others, but can you at least appreciate that I got you out of a particularly nasty situation tonight?” Loki half-pleaded. “And now, with the rumor of Skoro’s death at your hands, the wrong sort of clients will think twice about risking it with you, won’t they?”

“But they’re _all_ the wrong sort!” Thor practically exploded. “Because this whole thing is wrong! I know you can get this disk off my neck, and you can get me out of here--it took you barely three words to make them get rid of that collar!” 

Thor was on a streak now, hot and hurting. “I’ve let them--I have cooperated with this only to _save your life_ and you have the nerve to tell me you’re playing a game—that leaving me in a fucking whorehouse is some chess move for you—that you did me a favor by protecting me from one client so you can flaunt your _cleverness_ to an insane perverted dictator?! Yeah, thanks for that, Loki, thanks.”

His brother looked at him solemnly, possibly even a little chastised for once. “…You have every right to be angry,” Loki said at last. “And as I’ve said…I am sorry. But I can’t stay—my time’s almost up and I’ll have to shift spaces before he catches me again. So just…get some rest, try not to get hurt, and I promise I’ll help you as soon as I can.”

Loki vanished, and Thor growled in frustration. “…Maybe I could do without your ‘help’,” he grumbled aloud to the empty space where his brother had been.

Silence settled in the apartment. Thor looked around for a moment, feeling vastly alone. “Loki… come back,” he said, and his voice hitched on the words.


	7. Happy Birthday, Grandmaster

Chapter 7: Happy Birthday, Grandmaster

 

Thor spent hours trying to escape from Skoro’s apartment, but it had been sealed with force fields that activated the disk whenever Thor so much as made a dent in the walls. Now that the collar was gone he had almost unrestricted access to his power, and threw lightning with abandon, scorching everything that could be scorched. Massive anvil clouds roiled and flashed above the city, answering his frustration, but the walls and floors and ceiling of the apartment were impervious to everything he tried. Eventually exhaustion caught up to him and dragged him down to sleep.

Long after he was out, thunderstorms raged in the skies over Sakaar.

He woke up in the transport, re-collared, guarded by twice as many armor-clad escorts as before.

“You killed Skoro,” one of them chattered at him, as soon as he was fully conscious.

“…Whatever you say,” mumbled Thor, not seeing any point in setting the record straight.

“The Madam would like a word,” the guard informed him.

The idea that he might be in trouble for the murder of a client barely crossed his mind. “And I would like a decent breakfast,” Thor grumbled.

The guards conferred with one another. One of them offered Thor a kind of an edible energy bar—and all but bowed to Thor as he held it up.

Thor cocked his head. “…What’s this?” he asked, squinting at the guard—and the food—in suspicion.

“It’s food from off-world,” the guard explained. “Fell through yesterday.”

“But… why are you giving it to me?” On any other world he might not have questioned a random act of kindness, but on Sakaar, it seemed ominous.

“…Because you’ve earned it,” said the guard. Thor frowned and figured he was inclined to agree. He accepted the bar and ate the whole thing.

 

This time, in the Madam’s office, Thor was allowed to sit in a chair, fully clothed—quite a contrast to his circumstances the day before yesterday. The Madam was engrossed in scrolling through columns of data on the holo-screen at her desk. Finally she turned towards him, her headdress swaying.

“…In five hundred years of managing this establishment,” she began softly. “I have never seen anything like this. How did you do it?”

Thor sat back in his chair, crossed his ankles, and folded his hands in his lap, staring straight ahead.

“…Slave,” the Madam addressed him. “I asked you a question.”

Thor looked around at the nearest guard. “Tell the Madam I do not speak to her,” he said, knowing that statement could be heard as either snide or subservient—but probably snide.

“Uh,” the guard cleared his throat. “He says he doesn’t--”

“I heard him,” the Madam assured him, sounding not the least bit affected. “If the slave will not speak, it will listen. In one night, this slave has accomplished more than most in the pleasure industry will achieve in their lifetimes. He has elevated himself to the ranks of the greatest concubines and courtesans in our history.”

Thor had intended to hold out on conversation, but this information surprised him right out of his silence. “…I did _what?_ ” he gave her a quizzical look. “Just by killing one guy?”

“No,” the Madam corrected, emotionless. “Your very first client was…impressed. She has requested you on an exclusive contract, with a clause for your use by the Grandmaster, of course. It is the highest-priced contract I have ever processed. This is all the more remarkable because she has enjoyed the services of over three hundred of my employees, and has never requested so much as a second night with any of them. How did you do it?”

Thor was taken aback. “I don’t know,” he answered honestly, shaking his head. “I didn’t even think she liked me that much.”

The Madam was quiet for a moment, studying him. “She liked you,” she stated at last. “Most whores spend their lives dreaming of an exclusive contract with a wealthy patron like her. How you managed to land such a client on your first attempt…defies explanation.”

Thor shrugged. “If it makes you feel better, you can give the contract to someone else, someone who wants it.”

The Madam’s headdress was perfectly still for a moment. Thor found himself wondering if maybe she didn’t even _have_ a face under there. “…That’s not how it works,” she informed him at last. “The contract is for you, not anyone else. I can’t replace you with a more deserving, better-qualified employee, as much as I would like to. She wants _you._ And then, there’s this—” she tapped at her screen, and some official-looking holographic document appeared, complete with a fancy Sakaarian letterhead. “The only thing more baffling than the result of your first engagement is the result of your second. This is a letter of appreciation from the Attorney’s Guild of Sakaar.”

“Attorneys?” Thor scrunched up his face in confusion. “You have lawyers here?”

“We have hordes of them,” the Madam explained.

“But for that, wouldn’t you need… laws?”

“We have games, which have rules, which are the same thing as laws. Most of our lawsuits are settled in the arena.”

“…Should’ve guessed,” Thor muttered to himself. “Anyway what’s in the letter? Is that poor guy who lost his wife actually a lawyer?”

She was staring at him again, he presumed. He hoped it meant she was thrown off-guard. “…He is not,” she said slowly. “But he has employed scores upon scores of attorneys to sue the Champion, many of whom have then lost their fortunes and even their lives in his senseless pursuit of justice. Then, last night he took _you,_ and because you satisfied some archaic custom of his tribe, he is now withdrawing his grievances and will no longer seek action against the Champion. The Guild is relieved to be free of the obligation and is granting you a cash reward of a million units. No more lawyers will be thrown to the arena in service of one man’s grief.”

“Can I see the letter?” Thor asked, astounded.

“I’ll send a copy to your suite,” the Madam agreed.

“…Don’t you mean _cell?_ ”

The Madam tapped a few buttons and apparently forwarded off the letter of appreciation. “Not anymore,” she said coolly. “You’ve been assigned a berth in our top-tier quarters.”

“…Because I’m appreciated by some lawyers??” This was getting too ridiculous to believe. 

She stopped, and Thor might’ve seen her physically sigh. “…Because you are the employee of the year,” she told him.

Thor blinked at that, and wasn’t sure what kind of joke it was supposed to be. “I’ve only been here two days,” he said blankly.

Now she really did sigh, long and low. “The Grandmaster loves his contests… he thinks they are good for morale. So once a year all the slaves here are allowed to vote for the employee of the year, and the winner receives not only an elevation in rank, but also upgraded quarters. Coincidentally, the annual voting for this absurd tradition happened this morning, scarcely an hour after the rumor broke that you had killed our most hated customer. You received ten times as many votes as any other.”

Slowly, as all of this began to sink in, Thor felt a tiny seed of hope unfurl a tender leaf. The situation still wasn’t great, and he still didn’t want to be here, but so far today was turning out to be less horrible than yesterday. Thor would take whatever he could get. Suddenly the loose ends of an idea began to flutter in his mind, like the tails of so many kites on a breeze.

“The million units,” he asked abruptly. “The cash reward from the lawyers—how much is that? Is it a lot?”

“It is twice the average annual salary of a Sakaarian citizen,” the Madam informed him.

“Is it enough to buy a slave?”

The Madam regarded him with almost otherworldly patience. “…It is enough to buy four or five slaves of standard quality.”

“Oh, good,” Thor gave her a tight smile. “In that case, you can tell my wealthy patron that I’ll accept her contract, on the condition that she lets me purchase two of her serving girls.”

The silence from the Madam was so all-consuming that it occurred to Thor that perhaps she was actually screaming on some frequency he couldn’t detect. “…You are not in a position to accept or decline the contract,” she said at last. “However…your elevation in rank means you are permitted to own and spend money. Therefore, I will… make the arrangements.”

Thor leaned back in his chair. “Thank you,” he said, and his voice was warm.

 

Later that day, the two ‘new’ girls from the rich woman’s home were delivered to Thor’s upgraded quarters, wearing matching dresses with plunging necklines that revealed their obedience disks. They were both draped in jewelry and their gray skin had been oiled to a glittery silver sheen—their former mistress had clearly wanted them to look their best when they were presented to their new owner.

“Hello again,” Thor said to them, smiling his friendliest smile. He couldn’t tell yet how these girls felt about being transferred over to him—he hoped they weren’t too frightened. He held up the fob device that had come with them, that was keyed exclusively to their disks, and they both stiffened. “No, don’t worry, I’m not going to zap you,” Thor assured them, and studied the controller from all sides, trying to figure it out. “I think… this is it,” he said and held two buttons down at once. The obedience disks on the girls fell away, leaving little circles of pinpricks behind.

The girls glanced at each other and then stared solemnly up at Thor.

“There you go,” Thor said cheerfully. “You’re not slaves anymore. I’m setting you both free.” 

One of them frowned in disbelief. “But… you are a slave yourself,” she mentioned in a wary voice.

“Technically that’s correct,” Thor granted, rocking a little on the balls of his feet. “But this is all perfectly legal—I was able to contact someone at the Attorney’s Guild to make sure.” 

“Are you… saying you don’t want us?” the other girl asked desperately. “Where will we go? We’ll end up as slags!”

“No, no—no you won’t,” Thor assured her. “You each cost two hundred and fifty thousand units, including the lawyer’s fee for making sure you’ll get citizenship or whatever, which means there’s five hundred thousand units left for you to live on—which I guess is an average annual salary on this planet, though of course you’ll have to share it.”

They stared at him, uncomprehending. “…You are setting us free, and giving us half a million units?” the first one recapped, voice low.

Thor beamed at them. “Yep.”

“But why?” the girl demanded, her face darkening in confusion. “We’ve done nothing to deserve it.”

“You did nothing to deserve being enslaved, either,” Thor countered.

The girls stared at him, then at each other. The first one tilted her head, and the second one gave a tiny nod. Then they both looked shyly up at Thor and made a tentative move towards him, more of a lean than an actual step.

Thor smiled again. “It’s all right,” he said. “We can hug if you want to.”

They wanted to. He leaned down, and they leaned in, their slight frames fitting easily side-by-side in his arms. They each slid a tentative hand around his back, barely brushing his armor as though they were afraid they weren’t allowed to touch him. “It’s okay,” Thor told them, an arm around each of them.

“We, we would thank you,” the first girl breathed against his chest.

“You’re welcome,” said Thor.

“No, I mean… we want to… we want to show our gratitude.”

Thor eased them back a bit, looking down at their matching faces. Their matching, darkly blushing faces. “Oh,” he said awkwardly. “That’s… really not necessary.”

“We know you prefer more experienced women, but, we…” they looked at each other again, and the second girl nuzzled her face against the neck of the first, gazing longingly back at Thor as she did so. “We were hoping you’d make an exception for us.”

Thor stepped back, dropping his arms. “Are you serious?” he wondered aloud, more to the universe in general. He’d been boldly hit-on and propositioned and had faced bizarre seduction attempts in unlikely circumstances from one end of the galaxy to the other, but this seemed to be crossing a line, even for him.

“Ever since you rejected us, we’ve wondered what it would be like,” explained the first girl, curling her arms around her companion. “We’ve experienced pleasing our mistress--”

“And each other,” spoke up the second girl, licking the underside of the first girl’s jaw.

“—but someone like you, a man, we’ve never… never experienced. After watching you last night… we decided we’d like to try it.”

Thor scrubbed a hand around the back of his head and down his neck, his brain pounding in his skull at the sheer inappropriateness of this. He’d wanted to do something nice for these girls, and he hadn’t wanted sex to be a part of it. “Girls, please,” he said haltingly. “I know you think you want to, and in other circumstances if you really wanted me to be your first I’d probably be delighted to oblige, honestly—but not like this. You should both just go, find a nice boy that you like, and…get to know him a little, and then...”

“Boys as nice as you are rare on Sakaar,” mentioned the second girl, a little bit sadly.

Thor sighed, feeling more depressed about the situation by the second.

“We imagined… we imagined you’d stroke our necks,” the first one admitted, as her companion gave her neck a loving caress in demonstration. “And kiss our breasts.”

Thor’s thought process short-circuited for a second there; kissing breasts was one of his favorite things, when it came to women—when it came to women who wanted to sleep with him, that is—who were also women _he_ wanted to sleep with, of course. These two girls, as provocative as they were being, still did not fall into that critical category of women. So Thor stopped them before their demonstration got out of hand. “Okay—that’s—look. You’re both beautiful, but, no, please. Just no. I’ll tell you what—you go off and get jobs, save up, then you help me buy _my_ freedom, or better yet figure out how to abolish slavery on this planet altogether, and then I will happily take you both out to dinner. Deal?”

They gazed at him for a minute, perplexed. “He’s refusing us because he’s a slave?” the second girl muttered to her match. “Isn’t that… backwards… I mean, _can_ a slave refuse?”

Thor’s heart sank a little more as the first girl looked him over, solemnly considering his status—he could see the idea occurring to her, the idea that she, as a free citizen, could order him to do whatever she wanted. But then a little glow of understanding dawned.

“…This one can,” she decided. “He may be disked and collared, bought and sold like the rest of us. But his heart is free.” She smiled at him. “We’ll go,” she announced. “And we are grateful. We’ll never forget your… kindness.” The word seemed to surprise her, like she had only just now remembered its definition. Then she remembered something else, and blushed all over again. “If we really are citizens, though, would you mind if we entered the raffle?”

“Oh, the raffle!” exclaimed the other girl. “I can’t believe we’ll be eligible for the raffle!”

Thor had the gnawing feeling that he probably did not want to know. Morbid curiosity compelled him to ask. “What’s the raffle?”

“You haven’t heard?” the first girl gaped at him in shock. “Tonight, at the Grandmaster’s birthday party. They’re raffling you off for a night with a random citizen. A one-in-a-billion chance for an average Sakaarian to experience a night with the most famous and expensive whore in the history of Sakaar.”

“Ugh.” Thor’s shoulders slumped. So the Grandmaster’s wretched party was going to happen tonight. This was the first he’d heard that they’d settled on a date.

“You really didn’t know about that?” wondered the second girl. “It’s been advertised everywhere today. Haven’t you turned on your entertainment system?” she pointed across the room at some technological device Thor hadn’t fiddled with. 

“I was just glad this room has windows,” Thor confessed.

“The party starts at midnight,” the first girl informed him. “Only the Grandmaster’s inner circle is invited, but all of Sakaar will be watching.”

“Thanks for the heads up,” Thor remarked evenly. “Oh, and about the raffle, if you win it… would you mind if we only cuddled?”

“We like cuddling,” the second girl chimed in. “Cuddling is our favorite.”

“In that case, enter away, and I hope you win,” Thor declared. “Just… don’t buy too many tickets, for raffles or things like that, all right? Half a million units will go by faster than you think.”

“There’s only one ticket per eligible citizen,” the first girl explained. “And don’t worry, we won’t waste your money.”

“It’s your money now,” Thor told them amiably. There came a polite tone of a bell from the door, and Thor looked up. “Oh, good—that will be the lawyer, here to make all this official.”

“…Thank you, again.” The girls locked eyes with him once more and then, clasping hands with each other, they went off to start their lives as citizens.

And Thor settled in to wait for the Grandmaster’s party.

 

The party was well underway when Thor was brought in, with scores of colorful guests already wasted and a few of them even unconscious, slumped over the turntables and jukeboxes and pinball machines and so forth in the spacious arcade—a lucky few had made it onto actual couches before succumbing to their intoxication. About a quarter of the guests, in various stages of sobriety, were groping each other and writhing back and forth in either heavy foreplay or actual intercourse.

Thor searched the crowd for anything that might be a shade of his brother—but if Loki was there in any form, he was invisible to Thor. It seemed to Thor that this was exactly the sort of party Loki would have been loathe to miss, ripe with opportunities to glean information and cultivate influence, which actually made Loki’s absence a bad sign.

As Thor passed by the various party-goers, excited whispers and outright exclamations followed him; these people recognized him, they knew why he was here. They’d been watching the all-day advertisements, which Thor had reluctantly viewed back in his room.

It was the first time ever that an _employee of the year_ from the Grandmaster’s Playhouse would be offered out in a raffle; to ordinary citizens no less! It was unheard of, it was thrilling! Only the brilliance of the Grandmaster could conceive of such titillating entertainment for the masses! One ticket per eligible citizen, and stay tuned tonight for the festivities!

There was a gaudily-decorated platform towards the center of the room, zig-zagged with neon lights, and Thor realized with an internal groan that the guards were herding him towards it. Then he heard a deep rumbling laugh, a voice he recognized, and his head swiveled around—

“Hulk?!” Thor couldn’t believe it—his friend from the Avengers was there at the Grandmaster’s party. Thor looked around the room again as if to make sure he really had been right about what he’d observed; people were having sex in here, in plain view. Thor hadn’t thought that Hulk knew what sex was, but at the very least he seemed unconcerned about all the stuff happening right there around him.

Actually, Hulk looked perfectly relaxed. He was right at home. This must not have been Hulk’s first time at this kind of party. He was sitting slouched back in a booth that was recessed a few feet into the floor, so his huge form hadn’t been immediately obvious when Thor entered the room. The table in front of him was covered in mostly-empty bottles and scraps of appetizers, and he was accompanied by three other people, a man and two women. Thor was surprised to see that he knew one of them, too.

“ _Val!_ ”

She looked up, scowling, and met his eyes. Hulk seemed to notice that something had caught Val’s attention, because his gaze followed hers, and then locked onto Thor in confusion.

“That’s Thor,” Hulk said to Val.

“Yeah, that’s Thor,” Val muttered back.

“Hey!” Hulk called loudly across the room. He motioned to the guards with one massive hand. “Bring Thor here.” 

“Yes, good, great,” Thor thought aloud, as the guards made the wise decision to obey the Champion’s command. The presence of the Hulk was filling him with energy; he knew the Hulk had the power to end this whole farce, to tear down the whole building—the whole city—and get Thor out of this. He was mostly resigned to not fighting his way out on his own, thanks to the combination of the disk and the collar and the Grandmaster’s threat against his brother. But he was still available for _rescue,_ as far as he knew. Loki might have saved him with a word, Thor was still convinced of that—but Hulk could do it with his fists. He just had to get the big guy on his side.

Soon they were face to face. “Hulk,” Thor started, swallowing. “What are you doing here?”

“Hulk was invited,” Hulk explained with a slight frown. “What _Thor_ doing here? Hulk smashed you.”

The other people at Hulk’s table snickered a little. Thor bit his lip. “Yes, you did,” he acknowledged.

Val stood up, knocking over a couple of bottles. “I already told you,” she slurred to the Hulk. “He’s the whore, the one they’re raffling off. The Grandmaster’s fucking whore. That’s why he’s here.”

Hulk looked back and forth from Val to Thor in surprise. “…Thor is whore,” Hulk said bluntly. Then he laughed. “Ha ha, that’s stupid,” he declared, and reached for his drink.

“Yes,” Thor agreed, nodding urgently. “Yes, it’s very stupid, it’s the stupidest thing on this whole planet. That’s why you have to help me.”

“Help?” Hulk asked, confused.

“I’m not listening to this,” Val seethed. “I’m out of here.” She climbed out of the booth and put one hand on her hip, looking back at Hulk. “Are you coming? I can take you out to that bar, the one with the fish tank in the wall.”

Hulk’s brow furrowed. “…Hulk stay at party,” he decided, though it sounded like it had been a difficult choice.

She rolled her eyes and pointed at Thor. “Are you friends with this guy or not?” she demanded. “If you are, you’re not gonna want to see this.”

Thor leaned into her personal space, as close as he dared. “…Does that mean _you’re_ my friend, since you’re leaving?” he muttered towards her ear.

Her head whipped around to face him, her eyes round and dark. She tucked her chin and looked him up and down, offended. “Get away from me,” she murmured, incensed.

Hulk apparently did not like seeing the two of them squared off like that, chest-to-chest, Thor practically looming over her. “ _Hnn,_ ” he grunted in warning. “Thor leave Angry Girl alone!”

Thor conceded the staring contest to Val and smiled at his big green friend. “All right. But I do need your help. I can’t fight the Grandmaster, but _you_ can.”

Hulk’s unhappy expression deepened a little. “…Grandmaster is Hulk’s friend.”

“No, he’s not, he’s evil,” Thor insisted. Hulk only scowled at him, unconvinced.

A sudden drumroll interrupted all conversations, and giant spotlights from the ceiling swung across the crowd and converged on the platform. “Yes, it is I, your nearly omnipotent Grandmasterrrr,” said the Grandmaster’s voice, incongruously even-toned and unexcited in contrast with all the fanfare. The drumroll ended in an oddly anti-climactic clash of cymbals, and the Grandmaster himself appeared in the center of the platform, a sort of a microphone in his hand. There was only a half-hearted spattering of applause from the audience.

“Great to be here, thank you,” the Grandmaster droned, and held up a hand to block the spotlight from his eyes. “Can we turn off these lights? Someone? In the back—thank you.” The floodlights turned off. “That’s better. Now then—ah. Welcome, one and all, gentleladies, not-so-gentle ladies, things that aren’t ladies at all but are that other thing I can’t remember at the moment, oh well—welcome, loyal Sakaarians, to my twenty-ninth celebration of my twenty-nine-millionth birthday, that was such a good year for me, I do love remembering it. So this is a special day, and as you’ve all heard by now, I’ve got a special treat for myself—and for one lucky citizen. Now, where is he at… let’s get him up here, get a look at the goods.”

“Argh,” Thor growled as the guards began to lead him away. “Please, Hulk--!”

But Hulk stubbornly returned his attention to his drink. Val had chosen this moment to disappear. 

Thor was forced up onto the platform. “Oh, Sparkles, don’t be shy, don’t be shy,” the Grandmaster coaxed. “You and I have made a special deal, haven’t we? We have a _magical_ understanding of one another, isn’t that right?” 

The Grandmaster poked the microphone towards Thor’s face. “…Yes,” Thor said.

“And you’re very happy to be here tonight, aren’t you?”

“…Yes,” Thor repeated into the mic.

“Oh boy, that sounded just a bit sullen, didn’t it?” the Grandmaster pouted. “Can I get a ‘yes, Grandmaster,’ at the very least?”

“Yes, Grandmaster,” said Thor.

The Grandmaster shook his head, clucking his tongue in disapproval. “My, my, my. If you hadn’t gone _all out_ last night and proven to the world what an outstanding whore you can be—voted _whore of the year,_ after just one night, can you folks believe that? I was delighted when I heard. But now, I would almost think—and I know, this is terrible, but I would almost think that you were still… just a little bit… resistant. But I’d be wrong to think something so awful, wouldn’t I? Because really you are committed. And you can’t wait to prove it, right?”

“Right,” Thor answered.

“Great.” There was a flash, and a simple sort of chair appeared beside them on the stage—slightly reclined. No armrests. “Take a seat,” the Grandmaster instructed, and Thor complied. "Hands behind your back now, around the back of the seat there..." The Grandmaster smiled as Thor reached his arms behind the chair, and a pair of automatic cuffs locked themselves around his wrists. Thor's chest heaved in a silent sigh. 

The Grandmaster hummed and straddled Thor’s lap, facing him. “Oh, this is comfortable,” he purred, scooting up towards Thor’s hips. “Now, I’m gonna go ahead and narrate for our audience here, everything I’m doing… starting with….” He held up one finger. “Getting my fingers nice and wet. In your mouth.” He pressed the pad of his index finger to the center of Thor’s lower lip. “Just keep your lips pressed together for me, nice and tight. Tight as you can…that’s it… not your teeth though, just your lips. Teeth apart for me, lips together. Oh, that’s amazing. Ladies and non-ladies out there, Sparkles here has a very strong little mouth, don’t you? And now… just a little more pressure, curve this finger down, and… in we go. Oh, just the tip, of course, we aren’t savages here, we like this part, don’t we, babe? You can nod.”

Thor nodded, but his eyebrows flinched a little. “I’ll just slip this back and forth, oh, just a little, just a little tiny bit, back and forth across this lip… and now he’s gonna suck the rest of it in, aren’t you?”

Thor nodded again, and attempted to suck the Grandmaster’s finger into his mouth. “Mmm, would you look at that, look at this _face_ he makes, oh, he’s trying his best. But I’m gonna help him out, and go ahead and push this finger in—oh, all the way, _all the way in_ this time, yes, it’s almost there, almost there—and it’s in, and oh, it’s just so wet, just disgustingly wet in this hot little mouth of his. He must love the taste of the Grandmaster. Oh, I can tell that he does. His whole mouth is watering for me. He wants a little more. So here we go… slide this finger back, and out, and now… two fingers. One wet and one dry, side by side, oh I think he’s more than ready for this, folks… right past the edge of his lips and, yes, oh yes, I can feel his tongue, right there—he’s taking these in like a pro. Suck a little for me, Sparkles, just a little. You’re not a baby borglebope on an udder, for goodness sakes—be soft for me, just the softest little suck—now you’ve got it. Ladies and other assorted attendees tonight, I now have two fingers deep in this beautiful mouth.”

Thor couldn’t say why he chose that particular moment to blush, but he felt heat racing across his face all the same. And then before he could think about it, he looked sideways into the crowd, and locked eyes with the Hulk.

Hulk seemed… worried, Thor thought. Hulk wasn’t okay with this—and Thor’s heart leapt in hope. Any minute now Hulk would figure out that this was wrong, would conclude that the Grandmaster was evil, and would intervene. _Come on, Hulk, come on,_ he thought. _Get me out of here._

“Let’s see if he can do one of my favorite things,” the Grandmaster was saying. “I’ve got my fingers pressed together inside his mouth here—so you’re gonna bring your tongue up, underneath them, right, yes—press up against my fingers with your tongue, give them a loving little lick, and then you’re gonna push your tongue up in-between them, right? Just, right up the middle—split those fingers open with your tongue, yes, yes Sparkles, oh you’ve got it—I want your tongue between my fingers, holding them open for me, just like that—don’t let me squeeze them back together—oh, I want to squeeze them together but I _can’t,_ your tongue wants these fingers wide apart, doesn’t it? Yesss… oh, let’s do that again… my fingers are together and now—slip that tongue right up between them, oh, push them apart. You’ve got the hang of it. Oh, baby… these fingers are just about done. Let me slowly pull them out… and… there we go. Two perfectly slick fingers, whatever should I do with these, hmm? Oh wait, I know.” 

The Grandmaster promptly stuck his wet fingers into his own mouth, and sucked.

“ _Ew,_ ” Thor said in disgust, though he wasn’t sure why—he’d seen and experienced far nastier things, and honestly of all the likely scenarios here, that had probably been the least gross. The Grandmaster grinned at him, delighted.

“What’s that? Was that an ‘ew’, that I heard just now? Could it be that you don’t know how delicious you are? Oh, I know exactly how to fix that. That’s another of my favorite things—back and forth, you know. You can do me first, get yourself psyched for it if you want. But for now, let’s move this show right along to act two. You are wearing way too many pants for this part—let’s go babe, time to take ‘em off.”

Thor looked over at Hulk again with what he meant to be a silent cry for help. But Hulk’s worried look had faded, and if anything, he now looked… interested. Thor frowned, feeling slightly betrayed. Hulk couldn’t be _enjoying the show_ —Thor was his friend, his teammate. There was no way Hulk could believe that Thor was into this.

The Grandmaster patted Thor’s face, startling him. “Heh heh,” the Grandmaster chuckled, and flicked off the microphone. He wrapped his arms around Thor’s neck and leaned close, crooning confidentially into his ear. “ _In a minute. We’ll get him in on this in a minute._ ”

Suddenly Thor was filled with dread that the Grandmaster had not only seen him frowning, but knew exactly who he’d been frowning at. “…What do you mean?” he asked with caution.

“Oh, you will find out—” he turned the mic back on, and climbed off Thor's lap. “Ladies and other-than-ladies, your attention please, I was going to show you all just how hot and wet his other end can be, how soft and wide and probably red inside—but it has just come to my attention that it’s time for the thing you really came to see: the raffle! Topaz, bring me that thing full of the tickets, will you?”

Topaz marched forward from somewhere and handed her boss a great big fishbowl full of what looked like confetti. The Grandmaster dipped a hand into the bowl, came up with a tiny speck of paper, and squinted at it. “And the winner is… oh my word, would you look at this!” he exclaimed. “This really must be my birthday because this is everything I’ve ever wanted, truly a dream come true—the winner of the raffle, the winner of an unforgettable experience with the absolute best little whore this planet has ever seen, is our very own, beloved, revered, undefeated, and yet tragically sexually neglected…Champion.”

A spotlight swung over onto the Hulk, and the crowd, which had barely been paying attention before now suddenly went bananas, roaring and cheering and banging their hands on the tables. Hulk blushed like green phosphorus as suddenly everyone in the room was congratulating him and celebrating his good fortune all at once. The Grandmaster burst into a peal of laughter, and Thor broke out of the cuffs and lunged for him—and wound up face-first on the floor of the platform in the sizzling grip of the disk.

“Oh, tut-tut-tut, you naughty boy,” the Grandmaster muttered down at Thor, wiping tears of laughter from his eyes. “You just tried to attack me—after everything you promised? I guess I should kill your brother for that, or at least, like, take a bath in his blood or something, probably do wonders for my skin, magic blood like his, you know how it is, when you reach my age—sometimes you just need to take a nice long bath in somebody’s magical blood. But, you know what, I’m in a good mood, I’ll let you have this one little freebie. I know you didn’t mean it. You’re the whore of the year. Totally doing the best you can—and I honestly cannot wait to see if you’re good enough to handle the Hulk.”

He turned off the disk.

“You’re sick,” Thor pronounced from the floor.

“Yeah,” the Grandmaster’s voice curled. “But I do love my Champion. And he… he never gets laid, you know? It’s absolutely tragic. Big healthy hunk like him… and not bad-looking. You’d think the ladies and those other things would line up around the block for him, but, they don’t. It breaks my heart, Sparkles, breaks my heart. I just want him to, you know. _Get off,_ for once. He’s worked so hard, non-stop, really. He needs some sweet relief! And you’re gonna give it to him, or I’ll be scheduling a special day at the spa.”

“Hulk won’t go along with this,” Thor predicted. “I’m his friend.”

“And that’s what makes this perfect, don’t you see? I couldn’t give him just any old whore—no no no no, that would just be a mess! He needs somebody who understands him, someone who cares. He needs a very special friend. And also, you know, someone he probably can’t kill in the process, too. I mean, let’s be realistic here. Even if you didn’t know him, you’d still be the best candidate for this, physically. You’re… quite durable.”

“I can’t fuck the Hulk,” Thor said, voice low. 

“But can _he_ fuck _you?_ " The Grandmaster leaned in, leering, and whispered near Thor's ear. " _I guess we're gonna find out._ "


	8. Too much dick

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning, warning, warning. Thor gets hurt. He's been hurt worse, I have no doubt--I'm sure he was hurt worse (physically, I mean) in the arena, but still, this is... bad. If you've read this far, I'm sure you can handle it, but if you want to skip this chapter I totally understand. 
> 
> Also, I'll probably clean this chapter up a little in a few days, but I know I told someone I'd post this chapter today, so, here it is. Just... keep your coping mechanisms handy, ok? 
> 
> This picks up right where chapter 7 left off...

Chapter 8: Too much dick

 

“Oh, Champion?” the Grandmaster called, looking out across the wildly-freaking-out crowds. “Come on up here, big boy.”

Still blushing a radioactive green, Hulk excused himself from his booth and moved towards the platform, grinning bashfully as people patted his arms and shoulders in encouragement on his way.

“Remember now,” the Grandmaster confided to Thor. “You love this, okay? You want this. This is your job and you’re great at it and if you get enough dick you just might die from pure bliss. Hulk’s going to have the best night of his life, you got it?”

Thor just glared at him, his pulse visible in a vein at his temple.

“Topaz,” The Grandmaster said idly. “Go dump little Loki’s body in my bathtub, would you? And turn the water on.”

“Right away, boss,” Topaz agreed.

“Fine, I got it, I understand,” Thor said, breathing hard. “Leave Loki alone.”

“Put him in the tub, but leave the water off,” the Grandmaster amended. “For now.”

“Whatever you say,” Topaz grumbled as she set off on her mission. The Grandmaster cleared his throat and welcomed Hulk up onto the platform.

“Wow! Here he is, ladies and gentle…mentles? Gentlementles… nope. Gentle…critters? Honored guests: it is my pleasure to present, _the Hulk!_ Hulk, my beloved Champion, you gorgeous green dreamboat, how do you feel about winning the big raffle tonight?!” 

Hulk had to hunch down a little to talk into the microphone. “Good,” he said into the mic, deafening half the crowd.

“Yikes, right—don’t need the microphone for you, should have thought of that,” the Grandmaster muttered as an aside. “Okay—you know what you won, right?”

Hulk’s brow furrowed. “Best whore on Sakaar,” he answered, and cast a curious glance at Thor. Thor swallowed and tried his best to smile.

“Very good,” praised the Grandmaster. “I swear you get smarter every day, Hulk. Before long you’ll be the smartest one here. Anyway, my darling Champion, I can’t help but comment on the fact that this is, like, a really special night for you, right?”

“Grandmaster’s birthday,” Hulk provided.

“Yes! Yes, it is my birthday, and you want to give me a present, don’t you?”

Hulk nodded, and the Grandmaster rubbed a giant green bicep in soothing circles. “That is so nice, so wonderfully nice of you, my Champion, to want to do that for me! And you will do that for me, you’re going to give me the best birthday present ever, just by enjoying yourself. You know what, I don’t say this often, but, you _honor me,_ you know that? You are my absolute favorite, and I would do anything to make you happy. But the special night I was talking about, I wasn’t even talking about my birthday, I was talking about _you,_ finally getting to have some actual sex!”

“Oh,” Hulk blinked, looking ever-so-slightly concerned, but nodded. “Right.”

“I mean, we _have_ talked about this, haven’t we?” the Grandmaster raised his eyebrows, as if this was a long-standing subject of intimate and confidential conversation. “Ever since you got here, I mean, sex has been everywhere—you’ve seen us all going at it, myself and half of the people in this room included—sex is a big part of our lives here, and, sadly, you’ve been a little left out, haven’t you? Haven’t you…felt a little lonely?”

Hulk sighed, the motion of his shoulders practically an avalanche. “Yes, Hulk lonely sometimes,” he admitted.

“You poor, poor darling. And we tried to find you a mate, didn’t we? All those big, bubbly girls we interviewed, all extra-large—how’d that go?”

“Bad,” Hulk said, scowling at the memory. “Those girls not like Hulk.”

“Yeah, they were weak,” the Grandmaster deemed. “Bunch of blubbering crybabies! And it was totally my fault, my fault trying to set that up, when there just wasn’t any chemistry, you know? I felt so bad, I tried to make it up to you, I got you that fancy toy, that high-tech thing—”

“Robot,” Hulk scowled even more.

“And what happened to your fancy fuckbot?” the Grandmaster wondered sympathetically.

“Smashed,” Hulk reported, causing the crowd to erupt in cheers. “Hulk hates robots,” Hulk muttered.

“Just to clarify for the folks here,” the Grandmaster interjected, “Did you smash the robot by fucking it to bits??”

“No,” Hulk shook his head. “Just regular smashing.”

“So all this time… there’s been no sex at all for my beautiful Hulk!?” wondered the Grandmaster in an agonized voice.

Hulk shook his head again. “No sex,” he sighed.

“But it’s something you’ve always wanted to try, right?” prompted the Grandmaster.

“Hulk will try it,” Hulk agreed. 

“That’s my boy!” The Grandmaster finished up rubbing his arm and gave him a few rapid pats. “You’re going to do great. You’re going to love it. That’s why this is a special night for you.”

“Sex is good,” Hulk remarked, directly to Thor this time.

“Oh,” Thor looked up at that big green face, the dark eyes that reminded him of Bruce. He nodded. “Yes, Hulk, that’s right. Sex is good. It feels great.”

“Aah, I’m so happy,” the Grandmaster sighed, and conjured up a comfy chair for himself, in which he promptly sat. He waved a hand at Hulk and Thor. “You may proceed.”

They looked at each other for a second, and then both awkwardly took a step in, before freezing in place as they realized the other had also moved. “Any day now,” the Grandmaster drawled, rolling his eyes.

Thor swallowed. “Okay,” he said carefully. “Hulk, we… we can do this, all right?”

Hulk nodded. “All right,” he agreed. Thor stepped up to him, his heart racing. He slid his arms around the Hulk’s waist, and squeezed tight. Hulk patted Thor awkwardly on the back.

“…What’s wrong?” Hulk wondered after a few too-long seconds passed.

“ _Wrong?_ ” echoed the Grandmaster, voice high.

“Nothing, nothing’s wrong,” Thor reassured the Hulk, loud enough for the Grandmaster to hear. “I’m just a little nervous—excited, excited nervous. Like before a big fight, you know? When you think you might get a little bit hurt, but you know you’re still going to be okay at the end? Excited like that.”

Hulk wrapped his hands over Thor’s shoulders and, to Thor’s astonishment, the pressure wasn’t too much—wasn’t _crushing_ at all. It probably would have been tolerable even for a human, the Hulk’s grip was so light. 

“Hulk… excited too.”

“Good,” Thor said and tried out another wobbly smile. “Can we… let’s take off our clothes,” Thor suggested.

“Nooope,” the Grandmaster interrupted. “Excuse me, Sparkles, but you will take off the Champion’s clothes, and he’ll take off yours. Got it?”

“Right,” Thor nodded. “Okay. Here you go, Hulk. I’ll just, get these…” Hulk wasn’t wearing much in the way of clothes anyway, just some thick Sakaarian shorts and a pile of wooden-bead necklaces, which he had to bow his head for Thor to lift away from his neck. When the shorts came off there was an astonished murmur throughout the room, as apparently the actual dimensions of the Hulk’s big green dick had been the subject of wild speculation. Thor was pretty sure he saw money changing hands.

“Those are the sounds of pure admiration,” the Grandmaster assured the Hulk. “And maybe a couple sounds of envy, too. Folks, isn’t our darling Hulk the most glorious thing you’ve ever seen? Where else you gonna see a cock like that? No place else, that’s for sure.”

Thor, for his part, wasn’t surprised in the least—the Hulk was pretty much exactly what he’d expected: impossibly huge. Too big to even _consider,_ though of course that sort of thinking was useless now. The spectators burst into warm applause, and Hulk smiled proudly at the praise.

“My clothes now,” Thor said gently, and Hulk helped him strip—as careful and precise as if he’d been handling a much more fragile person. He tugged Thor’s pants down and Thor stepped out of them, and then they were both totally naked. Hulk took himself in hand, stroking patiently. The crowd began to murmur excitedly, their anticipation building.

Hulk looked around the room, a little glassy-eyed, making little progress with his cock. Finally he appealed to the Grandmaster. “...Too many people,” he grumbled.

“What’s that?” the Grandmaster asked distractedly. “It’s a party, Hulk—there’s gotta be people.”

Hulk shook his head. “Hulk want… only Thor. In Hulk’s room,” he explained.

“What!” the Grandmaster looked shocked. “What about me?!”

Hulk looked a bit guilty. “Okay,” he agreed. “Grandmaster too.”

“Very well,” the Grandmaster granted, and waved a few lazy circles in the air. “Sorry about this, folks, but we are relocating the festivities to a more private location—bar’s open here, so I’m sure you’ll all cope. Ugh--magic like this is really a strain, but, it’s faster than walking. And…here we go… poof!”

Thor felt the world slide sideways around him and suddenly he was in an unfamiliar space—living quarters. There were shelves with bottles of liquor. A bed within a giant animal skull.

“My room,” said the naked Hulk beside him. 

“Ah good, we made it,” said the Grandmaster cheerfully, miming the action of brushing dust from his robes. “I will have to thank a certain someone’s brother for the little power boosts he’s been unwittingly giving me. He’s got such a _reservoir,_ that one… It would take me an era to drain him properly. Now then—where were we?”

“Sex with Thor,” Hulk supplied. The change in location and the disappearance of the audience had done the trick; he was already half-hard and rising.

“Ooh, better catch up,” the Grandmaster said teasingly to Thor.

Thor grit his teeth and gripped his cock and brought himself up to hardness in a couple of strokes. Hulk gave him a little grunt of approval, and put one hand on Thor’s shoulder again as he used his other hand to coax himself stiff.

“Put your mouth on it,” the Grandmaster suggested conversationally to Thor, reclining himself onto a sofa and crossing his legs at the knees.

Thor glanced up at Hulk, who seemed vaguely expectant, and reached out to replace Hulk’s hand with both of his own. Hulk grunted a little, and nudged himself forward into Thor’s grip.

_Fuck,_ Hulk was hard. Thor tightened his hold on the thing, using quite a bit of strength, and could barely indent Hulk’s skin at all. Carefully, he got down on his knees, looking up at Hulk’s face. “You’re not going to fit in my mouth,” he said apologetically. “But I’ll still make it feel good, all right?”

Hulk nodded and watched, mesmerized, as Thor pulled that cock to his lips. Thor acted as if he might try to take a bite out of it, getting as much of his mouth around the head as he could.

“ _Oh,_ ” Hulk shivered, and settled his hands around Thor’s shoulders, squeezing just a little.

“Good?” Thor asked cautiously, still holding Hulk with both hands. 

“Yes,” Hulk replied, voice small. He shifted forward a little, bumping his cock against Thor’s cheek. Thor took the hint and clamped his mouth to the side of it, sucking his way back to the tip, and then to the underside, and back up over the head.

The Grandmaster cleared his throat. “Nice,” he stated. “Use your teeth. I bet he’d like that.”

Thor did his best to hide his grimace and looked up at Hulk. “Do you want me to?” he asked lowly.

“Go ahead,” Hulk said with a nod, and so Thor scraped him with his teeth, nearly gnawed on him, and sucked as hard as he could, and Hulk shivered a little more.

“Oh, Sparkles, you eager little piece. It’s a shame your mouth’s so small and your neck’s so skinny,” the Grandmaster bemoaned. “He’s, what, two-thirds as thick as your neck, right now? Maybe more like three-quarters? Not gonna fit in that throat, I’m afraid. Good thing your ass’ll stretch better than your jaw.”

Thor supposed that was true enough, though he didn’t want to think about it. Hulk’s hands tightened around his shoulders. “…Lay on the bed?” Hulk rumbled.

“Whatever you want,” Thor agreed, and Hulk picked him up by the arms and carried him over, lowering him carefully on the mattress. He settled onto his back, and Hulk trailed a hand down his body, over his chest, over his stomach, over his groin. Thor felt amazed that fingers so tough and calloused could touch so _gently._ Whatever Hulk wanted to do with him—if in fact he wanted to do any of this at all, Thor thought grimly—at least Hulk didn’t want to be rough with him. If this was Hulk’s first time and supposed to be a positive experience, rather than some twisted psychological torture, Thor was starting to feel a little responsible for making sure this all went well. He knew now that he actually _could_ make this feel good for the Hulk—Hulk was sensitive to pleasure, after all, and seemed to appreciate Thor’s attention so far. Thor could make it work. He would get into this, and honestly make an effort here. This would no longer be about the bare minimum amount of participation required to appease the Grandmaster—this would be about the Hulk.

“Um, I’ve got an idea,” Thor spoke up, propping himself on his elbows. “Something that might work out a little more easily than, uh, other things.”

“What is it?” Hulk asked, curious.

Thor shifted and patted his abdomen. “You could oil me up a little and then rub yourself off on my abs,” he offered. “I bet that would feel pretty good.” 

The Grandmaster laughed approvingly. “Oh, I love it. Thinking outside the _hole,_ right?”

Hulk looked over his shoulder at the Grandmaster for direction, and the Grandmaster made a shooing motion with one hand. “You kids go on,” he crooned. “Don’t mind me. Fuck yourself silly on all those little muscles he’s got. Put those to some use, finally, am I right? And here—I was waiting for one of you to figure out you’d need this.” He tossed a bottle across the room, underhand, and Hulk caught it easily.

“Hmm, this stuff,” Hulk muttered appreciatively, recognizing the bottle. “Good stuff.”

“What is it?” Thor asked, unable to read the alien script on the label.

“For relaxing, after fighting,” Hulk explained. “Feels good.”

Thor figured that was worth a try. “You want to rub some on me?” he asked the Hulk, eyebrows high. Hulk blushed brilliantly and nodded, and carefully poured a tiny drizzle of the stuff across the bottom of Thor’s ribs.

“Mm-Mm,” Thor chuckled a little, wriggling his shoulder blades against the mattress. “That tickles—oh, it’s warm.” Hulk slid his hand through the glistening liquid, carefully spreading it all the way down Thor’s stomach and back up, his palm gliding effortlessly over Thor’s skin.

“Slippery,” Hulk muttered.

“Mmm,” Thor agreed. “Feels good—tingles a little—I think—oh,” Thor startled as the stuff went to work on his abs, sinking in with a powerful relaxant. He tensed his core to gauge the effect, and found that he almost couldn’t hold his muscles taut. “Oh, that stuff’s strong,” he remarked, impressed.

“Hulk is strong,” Hulk shrugged. “Need strong stuff.”

“So this works on you too?” Thor wondered. Hulk nodded.

“Good for neck, shoulders, arms,” Hulk explained.

“I bet.” His abs felt warm and relaxed and soothed—Thor could imagine the effect on the larger muscle groups. He suddenly thought how great it would feel on his quads, just sinking into his cells with that tension-releasing heat. “Put some on my legs,” he requested, and Hulk did exactly that—he put just a few drops of the oil at the top of each thigh, and then cupped his palms around Thor’s hips and pulled his huge hands down, slowly, to Thor’s knees, spreading that tingly, slippery warmth as he went.

“Oh, fuck,” Thor cursed, and Hulk paused. “…That feels amazing,” Thor said in complete sincerity. “Your hands on my legs—do that again.”

Hulk ran his hands back up, and then down and up again, until those thighs were completely slick. Hulk stopped at the top, with his big green thumbs pressed to the crests of Thor’s hips. “Kind of a turn-on, isn’t it?” Thor asked with a half-smile, as Hulk’s breathing quickened a bit.

“Yes,” Hulk admitted—though the vertical angle of his cock was more than enough confirmation of that. His hands tightened unexpectedly, and Thor felt a hint of a warning—what certainly _wasn’t_ a turn-on at all was the thought that from here, with that grip, Hulk could snap Thor’s pelvis in two like closing a book. That…would hurt.

Thor sighed, resolute. “You should stand up, and I’ll lay on the edge of the bed,” he instructed, and Hulk got up, turning to face him. The bed was at just the perfect height for this. Thor wrapped his legs around the Hulk’s waist, glad that the massage oil or whatever it was on his thighs hadn’t sapped all his strength—just took the edge off the tension, really. “Here you go, Hulk… right here,” Thor said cheerfully, patting his stomach again. Hulk held his cock down with one hand and guided it up along Thor’s groin, following Thor’s own cock to the dip of his navel, and then all the way up to the edge of his ribs.

Thor arched his hands over his abs, helping to hold the Hulk in place, pulling that thick cock tight against his body and giving the Hulk a sort of a barrier to ram into. His skin was slick and hot, and Hulk quickly figured out the back-and-forth mechanics—and Thor didn’t need to ask him if he liked it, because he sped up almost immediately, seeking more friction.

Before long Thor wished they’d used less of the slippery stuff; Hulk was sliding all over the place and nearly jabbing his way up under Thor’s ribs, and Thor’s hands were too slick to properly catch and deflect him. Not to mention, Thor could barely keep his abs clenched enough to keep himself comfortable; slack or taut those muscles presented a decent surface, but Thor would have appreciated being able to put up a little more resistance once the Hulk got going.

Still, overall, this wasn’t too bad—Hulk was enjoying it, that was the important thing—and then Hulk was leaning over him, eyes shut, concentrating—and Thor realized he was going for it; he was getting close. Hulk braced his elbows on the bed on either side of Thor’s shoulders, tucking his hips in and up, trapping his cock between their bodies and yet still thankfully not smothering Thor under his wide green chest.

“That’s good, Hulk,” Thor muttered. He was doing his best to catch that cock in his hands and squeeze it at every thrust, squeezing it down against his body until it was pulled forcibly out of his grip each time Hulk rocked back.

Out of the corner of his eye Thor noticed that Hulk had clenched his fists, and his great shoulders were twitching. “It’s okay, you’re okay,” Thor repeated softly, hoping this wasn’t some precursor to a meltdown of some kind—it was all too easy to picture the Hulk rearing back from this position, fists raised high, launching into a rampage. “You’re okay, you’re okay...”

Hulk’s hips hitched, his cock shuddered—and Thor realized this was _it_ —“Augh, Hulk!” he said, but it was too late to give any instructions. Hulk pressed his face into the bed, well over Thor’s shoulder, and groaned into the mattress, and then briefly let his weight settle on top of Thor, which was really a bad move since it meant they both got splattered from their stomachs on up.

Thor waited a beat to let Hulk catch his breath, and then had to start struggling for breath of his own, pushing up against Hulk’s chest and tapping out against Hulk’s side. “Hulk, get up, just… let me up,” Thor half-pleaded, and Hulk came to his senses enough to roll onto his back.

Thor sat up beside him, taking stock. He felt something wet under his chin and wiped it away, only to discover there was more of it, on his cheek, on his neck—everywhere. “I think you even got some of that in my hair,” Thor remarked good-naturedly.

Hulk met his gaze and actually looked mortified—and Thor laughed. “It’s fine,” he said with a happy shake of his head. “I don’t care. It’s all over you, too.” He gave the Hulk a fond smile, realizing it was over. Hulk smiled weakly back up at him, comfortable, satisfied—and Thor felt a veritable sunrise in his heart. He’d done it—he’d had sex with the Hulk, he’d gotten the Hulk off, he’d made the Hulk feel good and had even gleaned some enjoyment out of the experience himself. They’d both come out of this okay, gotten through it together.

Now that it was over Thor couldn’t fathom what he’d been so afraid of, why he’d been so adamantly opposed to this—Hulk was perfectly in control of himself, not some frenzied beast. The whole thing had actually been pretty easy. It had actually been kind of nice. Thor raised his eyes across the room to the Grandmaster, still smiling. Just plain happy, rather than smug...but still just a little bit _defiant._

The Grandmaster stared blankly back at him, and for a split-second Thor felt a chill. Then the Grandmaster blinked, and grinned, and gave them a little golf-clap of applause.

“Well, well, well,” purred the Grandmaster from his couch. “Take a look at that. Hulk my darling, I had no idea you were such an artist. Those splashy lines, those drippy splotches. What a masterpiece.”

Hulk blushed yet again, sitting up next to Thor on the bed.

“So how was it, oh Champion my Champion?” the Grandmaster asked casually, tapping his foot in the air, from where his legs were crossed at the knees. “Did you like it? It looked like you liked it.”

“It was okay,” Hulk said brightly, sounding relieved.

“Just _okay?_ ” the Grandmaster looked pained. “Oh. Oh, dear. That’s… really a shame. I want this whole thing to be marvelous for you, not just ‘okay’. And I had hoped that your warm-up round just now would have really set the mood, you know? Got you both into it, got you both really fired up, you know?”

Thor narrowed his eyes. That sunrise he’d been basking in quickly turned to twilight.

“But,” sighed the Grandmaster dramatically. “What can you do, if you’re just not loving it, if the best whore on Sakaar isn’t good enough for you, oh well… I guess I’ll just be sad on my birthday after all. No presents for the Grandmaster this year, I guess. And I only wanted this one little thing, too.”

Hulk frowned, processing that. “What does Grandmaster want?” he asked at last.

“Oh, you know, not _much,_ ” the Grandmaster whined in exasperation. “I just want you to fuck him, Hulk. Really fuck him. Not just coddle him like you’re on a date to the soda fountain, ugh.”

“Hmm,” Hulk’s shoulders slumped a little, and Thor felt the urge to jump to Hulk’s defense—Hulk had been perfectly wonderful; how dare the Grandmaster find fault.

“So, you’re both really going to have to step it up, now that your warm-up’s over,” said the Grandmaster apologetically. “Sorry it wasn’t more exciting, that first part… but I’m sure you can make it up to me. I know Sparkles here is eager to get the show on the road. He’s gonna help you out, gonna make you love this. Aren’t you, Sparkles?”

Thor set his jaw. “Yes, Grandmaster,” he answered, and let himself sound a little bit dangerous. The Grandmaster’s eyes glittered excitedly, and Thor knew then that he’d guessed correct—the Grandmaster _did_ want him to chafe against this after all—he wanted to see rage smoldering at the edges, wanted to see desperation behind as thin a screen as possible. Not outwardly expressed, no—he wanted Thor to keep a lid on it, but he wanted that lid to rattle from the steam underneath.

_Fine,_ Thor thought to himself. _I’ll rattle._

“And you, Hulk, with your legendary strength?” the Grandmaster was droning on. “You’ll have that cock up again in minutes! And then, the next time you come, you’ve gotta be inside him.”

Thor had already been expecting something like that, but he winced all the same.

Hulk was staring at the Grandmaster, slightly confused. “Why?” he asked at last.

The Grandmaster rolled his eyes. “Oh, youuuu knoooow,” he said dramatically. “Because that’s where it feels the best, that’s where it counts the most, and, most importantly… that’s what I want for my birthday.”

Hulk sighed and then took a deep breath. “All right,” he agreed, sounding more-or-less determined. Thor turned his head and looked up at him.

“Really?” Thor asked, and then immediately regretted it as he saw a flash of doubt in Hulk’s expression.

“Thor…” Hulk seemed like he might want to ask a sensitive question, but Thor detected the Grandmaster watching him in glee, and cut the Hulk off.

“It’ll be fine,” Thor said cheerfully, patting Hulk on the knee. “I think it’ll be great. This was just a warm-up, like the Grandmaster said. You’re gonna love the next part, it’s going to feel twice as good, I promise.”

Hulk sent him an appreciative glance, seeming reassured. His great green cock had barely softened and was already almost fully hard again. Thor eyed it and knew, without a doubt, that it wasn’t going to _fit_ —but oh well. Thor was just going to have to try his best anyway.

“Looks like you’re ready to go,” he noted, matter-of-fact. “But I’m going to need a few minutes.” He doubted minutes or even days of prep would make much difference, honestly, but he groped around the blankets until he found the bottle of lube.

The Grandmaster cleared his throat, and in a flash of dread Thor thought he might order the Hulk to go ahead _right now._ “Oh, Hulk? You maybe wanna tag me in for this part?” the Grandmaster suggested. “I mean, I am sitting right here, I could get in on the action. I know our friend Sparkles would appreciate some…assistance.”

He bounced his foot in the air again, smirking, and Thor barely repressed a groan of revulsion. Hulk looked a little dissatisfied, a little confused. “What do…” he began to ask.

“No no, don’t you worry your pretty green head about this part,” the Grandmaster said brightly, springing up from his seat on the couch. He strolled over to the bed, rolling up his sleeves. “This part is my specialty. And I’m not even going to make that bad joke about giving him a hand—whoops, uh, nevermind, guess I just did—you get the point. Pass me that bottle.”

Thor shook his head, and tried to conceal the distress in his expression—and the Grandmaster’s smile intensified in response. “Come here, you poor little lord of lightning or whatever you think you are. Turn around and let my Champion gaze into your eyes while I stretch you out. Better my fingers than _his,_ am I right? You’d only be able to take _one_ of those things—and what fun would that be?”

Thor took a ragged breath. He was a little surprised by how intensely he _did not want_ the Grandmaster to touch him now. Despite his resolve to go through with all this he still couldn’t believe that there was no way out—no way to stop it. He wished he could fight; for most of his life fighting had worked out well for him—but here, that would end with the disk, and then he imagined the Hulk being forced to fuck him while he was disked out. Perhaps the Grandmaster would turn the disk off only after Hulk was finished with him. That wouldn’t hurt Thor any worse; might be better to be unconscious, actually—but there was no way that would be good for Hulk. Having to fuck his way into a paralyzed or unconscious body? _Ugh, no._ Not going to happen, not on Thor’s watch. He’d stay conscious and cooperative. He could do that much at least, for his friend.

So fighting was out of the question. What else, then, what else could he do? Talking his way out of a dead end had never been his talent—where was Loki when he needed him? _Face-down in a bathtub,_ Thor recalled with a twinge of anger. Another reason fighting was not an option.

Some evidence of these dark and circular thoughts must have been visible on Thor’s face—and the Grandmaster was practically feeding off this energy, this conflict within him. He was outwardly playing along; internally flailing for escape. It was seeping from the corners of his eyes, from the air in his lungs, emanating from every fiber of his being, and the Grandmaster was relishing it.

Thor narrowed his eyes. He’d get through this. He wouldn’t break. “You’re enjoying this,” he remarked neutrally.

The Grandmaster was oiling up his hands. “I’ll be enjoying it even more in a minute,” he said with a grin. “And so will you—isn’t that right? Tell my Hulk how much you’re gonna love this.”

Thor turned to face the Hulk, arranging himself on his hands and knees. “I’m gonna love it,” he said, and smiled up at the Hulk’s worried expression. “Really, Hulk… I mean it. It’s okay.”

“Maybe Hulk would like something other than words from that mouth of yours,” the Grandmaster mentioned. “You know, keep you both occupied while I do all _this._ ”

Thor held still as he felt two fingers sliding down into his body. The oil was hot and tingly and helping quite a bit, Thor had to admit—whatever external uses it had, it was probably meant for this. He couldn’t resist at all, not with that excellent lube softening him up--so he gave up thinking about it, and focused instead on the giant cock in front of his face. He closed his eyes and went to work with his mouth, successfully muffling whatever sounds he might have been tempted to make otherwise.

Gradually Thor became aware that the Grandmaster was keeping up a lascivious commentary, murmuring to himself under his breath—Thor heard a couple sentence fragments containing sickening little encouragements like _let it happen_ and words like _loose_ and _deep,_ so he stubbornly tuned the Grandmaster out—he’d had more than enough of the Grandmaster’s narration back on the stage at the party. Even when the Grandmaster wedged three fingers from each hand into his ass and pulled him apart, Thor still tried his best to ignore him.

“Oh, Sparkles,” the Grandmaster chuckled, his arms trembling from the strain—and the excitement—of holding Thor open. “Aren’t you a treat. I can see inside you now, you know—I can see so far into this beautiful hole of yours. I might even be able to see all the way down to your silly little heart. Beat, beat, beat. How wide do you think you are right now?”

Thor spared a salty glare over his shoulder. “Probably not wide enough,” he remarked, not the least bit unnerved.

“Hmm,” smirked the Grandmaster. “What a shame. What a shame—and what an honor, that I get to be the last person to see this ass in such…perfect condition.”

Thor looked back at the Grandmaster. “I’ll heal,” he seethed, and that bit of steam-under-the-lid went straight through the Grandmaster like a current.

He pulled his fingers away, stifling a giggle. “Okay, Hulk, it’s your turn now. You’re gonna tear him apart. With your dick.”

Hulk had not been paying much attention to the Grandmaster, but now he looked up, puzzled. “…What?”

“I said you’re gonna tear him apart with your dick,” the Grandmaster repeated crudely. “Isn’t that right, Sparkles? Is this slippery little hole of yours anywhere near big enough for _that?_ ”

Thor gave the Hulk his best sorry-about-that smile. “Unfortunately not,” he said, kneeling back. “So, yeah, it’s probably going to happen. You won’t kill me, Hulk, only…”

“Hurt you,” Hulk caught on, upset.

“You hurt me plenty in that fight the other day,” Thor pointed out. “You were beating my entire body against the ground at one point—punching me repeatedly in the face—you hit me with—"

“It’s different,” Hulk pouted, interrupting. “That was Contest.”

Thor’s heart rose and crashed at the same time. Hulk was right; this was different. But he shuddered to think what the Grandmaster would come up with to force compliance now, if Hulk decided he wasn’t willing. “Just think of this as a contest too,” he suggested. “It’s like, a challenge. Can you do it? Can you get your cock inside me like the Grandmaster wants you to?”

“Yes,” Hulk scowled. “But…”

“Oh Hulk,” The Grandmaster exclaimed. “You’re not gonna back out now, are you? When you’re this close? When you told me you’d do this for me? Sparkles, tell him how much you want it.”

Thor held the Hulk’s gaze. “It’ll be okay,” he said, keeping his voice as calm and soothing as he could. “Hulk, it will be okay. You can do it. I want…I want it to feel good for you.”

“That’s my boy,” the Grandmaster said, and he gave Thor’s ass a go-get-em slap.

The sound of that open palm across Thor’s backside hit Hulk like a bullet, sending a tremor through his massive shoulders, and Thor was rocked by an invisible wave of _danger._

The Grandmaster must’ve felt it too, because he raised both palms in a claim of innocence and stepped backwards, eyebrows raised in amusement.

“Easy, Hulk, easy. You’re alright, we’re alright,” Thor said right away. He wondered what would happen if Hulk… hulked out. _Johannesburg,_ Thor recalled. Johannesburg would happen—and even if that would end the Grandmaster’s games for today, having the Hulk snap like that…Thor remembered what Bruce had looked like in the aftermath. If Bruce was still in there somewhere there was no way Thor wanted him—or Hulk—to go through that again. “Stay with me, okay?”

“…Stay,” Hulk repeated, and to Thor’s relief he calmed down, the sense of imminent danger fading. 

Thor petted a big green arm, smiling. “…This will be just like the fight,” he promised. “You can smash me and I’ll be fine later.”

“Smash you,” Hulk echoed, seeming comfortable enough with that idea.

This was as ready as they’d ever be, so Thor positioned himself in front of Hulk on the bed, on his hands and knees with a direct view of the Grandmaster if he stared straight ahead. He knew this would be a little bit tricky, projecting veiled fury and indignation forward for the Grandmaster’s benefit, while directing only warmth and affectionate encouragement over his shoulder at Hulk. But he thought he could manage it.

“Help him out, Hulk,” the Grandmaster advised. “Pour that lube all over his ass.” Thor didn’t have to try too hard to project revulsion at the Grandmaster’s tone. The Hulk promptly did as instructed.

“Now rub it in,” Thor suggested to Hulk over his shoulder—and was treated to the awesome feeling of those enormous hands cupping his ass, thumbs sliding down the middle, strong and slick. Thor bit his lip and made sure to give the Grandmaster the faintest glare before letting himself focus on how good this actually felt. He knew what he was facing, but he’d take whatever consolation he could get along the way.

“I think he likes that,” noted the Grandmaster, smug. “But he’s not gonna like the next part. Go for it.”

Hulk nudged his cock into place and Thor braced himself against it, knowing this was going to hurt. He felt an out-of-place rush of excitement, the wild thrill of an upcoming battle. Fighting was exhilarating even if violent, even if painful. If he thought of this as just another physical challenge it would make sense to be excited about. _Just like the fight,_ he reminded himself, briefly elated. But those feelings faded quickly as Hulk began to push in. 

It wasn’t like fighting. It was a violation. Thor could only endure it. 

“ _Aah,_ come on Hulk,” Thor said at the first hot stretch of pain. His skin was pretty strong, he knew—but it could be cut, it could be burned, it could be torn—and it would have to tear now. He shut his eyes and willed himself to sink backwards, onto that source of pain. “Come on Hulk, _do it,_ you can do it.”

“Hm,” Hulk grunted, and wrapped his hands around Thor’s hips—tight. Thor lowered himself onto his elbows and dropped his forehead to the mattress, and that slight change of angle did the trick. That giant cock pressed in, and Thor’s skin ripped to make room for it, and Thor almost felt relieved that they’d finally gotten to the worst part.

“Keep going,” Thor gasped, and Hulk complied, his big hands pulling Thor back another inch. “ _Just keep going._ ”

The torn edge split further, deeper, and Thor felt a tiny trickle down the inside of his thigh.

“Blood,” Hulk noticed immediately, stopping.

“Doesn’t matter,” Thor breathed, shaking his head. “It’ll heal up fast, I promise—you’re doing fine.” _No worse than last night,_ Thor told himself.

Hulk gave a slightly frustrated sigh and shoved himself in further, a vice-like grip holding Thor steady in front of him. Once the whole head of his cock was inside he paused again.

Thor was breathing a little short and rough, and he’d had his eyes shut tight. Now he opened them and looked up to give Hulk a shaky smile. “So far so good,” he said. “You okay?”

Hulk shook his head no, looking at Thor with a distinctly troubled expression. “Hulk…can’t,” he said.

Thor winced—not from the pain, which was…significant, but from the thought that Hulk might quit and doom them both to something worse. “Why not?” he asked carefully.

Hulk glanced down at the damage he’d already done, and then refocused on Thor’s face. “Too much dick,” he said.

Thor still had it in him to laugh at that, and only would have stopped himself if he thought it might spoil the mood for the Grandmaster—but the Grandmaster had heard that remark and was already cackling away at it, so Thor allowed himself a warm little laugh. “ _Hah,_ Hulk, your dick is great,” Thor assured him, as Hulk looked a little unhappy about being laughed at. “It’s huge and it hurts a bit but Hulk, don’t stop, all right? We can do this.”

Hulk nodded and acquiesced, re-establishing his too-firm grasp on Thor’s hips. “Go on, Hulk, put it in there, put it in me,” Thor said, closing his eyes again. Hulk shoved against him, pulling Thor back with his hands, and Thor trembled beneath him and tore a little more. The injury was now distinctly internal, a weird, sharp pang, chased by a throb. Still tolerable, as far as Thor was concerned—he could tolerate quite a lot. But then again, there was a lot left to go.

Hulk seemed to commit to his task, and the pressure increased. That cock was crushing its way into him now. It was too rigid, too thick— _too much dick_ was certainly accurate. Thor wasn’t giving up, though. The next shock of pain brought him the gruesome realization that he was risking the sort of injury that might be fatal to a human. But it wouldn’t kill Thor. Hulk was halfway in, and this would probably get easier soon, once all the initial tearing was done. “Keep going,” Thor said. “Give me the rest of it.”

The second half was only as bad as the first, though by then the cumulative damage was far worse than the previous night’s injuries. Thor still checked on the Hulk whenever he paused, sparing fewer and fewer glances at the Grandmaster.

Finally that cock was in as far as it could go, the whole length of it buried in Thor’s body. Hulk gave a sigh of relief, and rubbed the small of Thor’s back with his thumbs. “Done,” said Hulk.

“Good job.” Thor’s smile was only slightly weakened by pain.

The Grandmaster cleared his throat. “Done? You’re not done, Hulk, you just got started! You’ve gotta fuck him, remember? You know, with the back-and-forth—and you’ve gotta finish up inside him, don’t forget that part.”

Hulk gave a half-hearted rock with his hips, slipping back and forth a few inches, and Thor managed to hide his shocked expression—that had _hurt,_ more than he’d expected.

“Doesn’t that feel good?” the Grandmaster prompted. “Doesn’t it feel good to be so deep inside that _thundery_ little body?”

Thor risked a glance over his shoulder, and Hulk met his eyes. “…Maybe,” Hulk admitted.

The Grandmaster chuckled. “Oh, the _pair_ of you,” he mused. “What a match you are. It breaks my heart a little that Sparkles has to go back to his new job in the morning.”

Hulk looked up. “What?” he asked.

“Sad to say, he’s been bought and paid for, they’ve already signed a record-setting contract for him. He’s gonna be busy, too—they say this lady’s insatiable, the one who bought him.”

There was a long pause, and Hulk looked like he was thinking furiously—a difficult task for anyone who was literally balls-deep in someone’s ass for the first time in their life. A couple awkward seconds passed, and Thor started to wonder if Hulk had totally zoned out.

“No,” Hulk decided abruptly, jolting out of his reverie in a way that made Thor hiss in pain. “Thor stay with Hulk.”

The Grandmaster’s mouth fell open.

Hulk thrust forward, and Thor whimpered, and Hulk bucked into him again before he had a chance to recover. Thor was about to say something, but noticed the Grandmaster leering at them both, looking like he’d never craved anything so badly in his life as the show they seemed to be on the verge of giving him.

“Hulk fucks Thor, like this,” said Hulk determinedly. “Only. If. Thor stays with Hulk.”

The Grandmaster licked his lips, swallowed, and licked his lips again. “That… that’s going to be a heck of a contract to get out of,” he said at last.

Thor risked a grin. “…I happen to be in good favor with the Guild of Attorneys,” he mentioned.

There was a beat as the Grandmaster stared at him, on his elbows and knees, the Hulk towering behind him. “...That sounds like something your brother would say,” he muttered. Thor tipped his head slightly side-to-side, granting that was true.

“Fine, fine, I’ll figure it out,” the Grandmaster fluttered a hand. “Thor stays with Hulk. Get on with the fucking already!”

“Good,” said Hulk, shoving himself forward yet again, nearly collapsing Thor onto the mattress.

Thor looked up over his shoulder. “You can go fast, Hulk,” he said in a rush. “Go as fast as you like.”

Hulk gave him a nod and clamped his hands around Thor's body and started to _push, pull, push, pull_ —and it burned far worse than Thor had imagined, burned so badly he immediately wanted to cry out for Hulk to stop. He knew this much pain must be obvious on his face, which thankfully the Hulk couldn’t see—but the Grandmaster could. Thor dared to check the Grandmaster’s reaction and saw a mixture of disappointment and disgust.

_Of course_ —Thor was being too honest right now; the lid he was supposed to be struggling to keep in place had been blown right off the second Hulk got to work. He was supposed to be playing along, playing a game, keeping up a mask. The Grandmaster had no desire to see his actual feelings; he wanted to see the _mask_ , the barrier. The steam was no good unless it was fighting the lid.

_Fake it,_ Val had told him. _Fake it if you can._

Thor thought past the pain, focusing, struggling to get his emotions under control. “ _Fuck me,_ ” he whispered, as the Hulk continued ramming into him. He let his voice get louder. “Fuck me, Hulk, come on, _fuck me._ ”

The Grandmaster looked pleasantly surprised.

“ _Fuck me,_ ” Thor repeated with every thrust. “ _Yes._ Yes, Hulk. Just like that. Just fuck me, fuck me.” He locked eyes with the Grandmaster and went silent. “And fuck _you,_ ” he mouthed, and the Grandmaster actually clapped his hands in glee.

“That’s it!” he exclaimed, shaking his fists in the air excitedly. “Now you’ve got it, Sparkles, now you’re on the board!”

Hulk grunted and grabbed onto him even harder, and Thor felt a flash of warning that a grip this tight was capable of doing serious harm. In many ways flesh was more resilient than bone could ever be—even Asgardian bones had limits. “Hulk--” he tried to say, tried to warn him—too late.

Thor cried out as his hipbone cracked under the Hulk’s hand. This new injury filled him with heat and energy. Power rushed towards him as it had in the arena, and he felt lightning in his eyes. He squeezed them shut to quell it. “Keep going,” he gasped to Hulk. “It’s okay.”

“ _Okay,_ ” Hulk repeated, sounding a little numb, a little detached. “ _Okay._ ”

Thor pressed his face into the blankets to muffle the sounds he wanted to make. This was _not_ okay, Thor was _not okay_ —he was hurt and he wanted to call this off. If Hulk squeezed him like that again he could crunch his bones to gravel. Thor didn’t know how much longer he could pretend to be all right—the pain was getting worse and Hulk was still pounding into him, every stroke as forceful as a punch. Thor was losing control here, losing his resolve to endure this. “Please, Hulk,” said between clenched teeth. There was a little bit of water in his eyes. “Please just _come._ ”

Right there on command, Hulk did exactly that. His final thrust broke down in the middle and then stuttered the rest of the way in, his entire body quivering. Thor felt the pressure of all that seed pulsing into him, and the awful wetness of it immediately leaking out—there was too much of it, and no place for it to go except down the backs of his legs. Hulk hunched over him, groaning softly, breathing hard. 

As soon as he stilled Hulk began to pull back, slowly, until at last he was out. The pain immediately lessened, and Thor whimpered in relief, lowering himself flat onto his stomach.

“…Thor all right?” Hulk asked quietly, laying down next to him.

Thor shook his head no. Took a breath. “...But I will be,” he said.

“ _Well then._ ”

Thor stiffened—for all of two minutes he had forgotten that the Grandmaster existed. He looked up with just the right mix of resignation and concealed intent to murder.

“Ah,” said the Grandmaster, with a lopsided, nearly apologetic grin. “That was… well. That was better than I hoped. What am I saying, that was probably the best thing I’ve seen in a hundred thousand years.”

“Glad you were impressed,” Thor lied, his voice dark.

“Mmm. My favorite part, you know, was how it took getting _fucked by the Hulk_ for you to finally figure out how to play along on my planet. Some people, I guess it has to be life-or-death before they learn anything.”

“I have been called a slow learner,” Thor admitted.

The Grandmaster’s eyes glittered. “Hmm-hmm. Yes. That’s why it’s so satisfying to teach you a lesson.”

“Thor is hurt,” Hulk remarked.

“Little bit, yep,” Thor answered drily.

The Grandmaster shrugged. “I’ll have a couple of medics look you over,” he promised cordially.

“Thor stay with Hulk,” Hulk mentioned firmly, and the Grandmaster’s head snapped up.

“Oh, right,” he said amiably. “That was the deal, wasn’t it? My increasingly intelligent Champion—setting terms like that, how could I refuse. Can’t wait to have this conversation with the Madam. She’ll flay me alive—if I ask her nicely.” He grinned and let his eyes linger over the scene in front of him.

“What a _mess,_ ” the Grandmaster said softly, eyes alight.

A floating chair arrived, and the Grandmaster climbed into it, slouching back in satisfaction. “Ta-ta,” he said with a wave, and floated away.

Thor pressed his face into the blankets and closed his eyes. It was over.

The last thing he felt was the Hulk's hand settling, carefully, on the back of his shoulders.


	9. Speak of the Devil('s Anus)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thor escapes from slavery and ends up as the King.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AUTHOR’S NOTE:   
> Remember this from the Ragnarok script, when Thor wakes up in the Hulk's suite?
> 
> _Thor looks back out the window._  
>  He sees a ramshackle SPACESHIP taking off and ROCKETING  
> skyward. Higher and higher, it’s going for a wormhole when-  
> -BOOM! One of Grandmaster’s Palace Patrol ships, more modern  
> and heavy duty, BLOWS it out of the sky. 
> 
> …that’s depicted in the movie, but it’s so tiny you can barely notice it. But it’s there in the background out the window in the Hulk's suite. Ok on with the chapter!

Chapter 9: Speak of the Devil(’s Anus)

 

People were touching him.

Panic flared and he came awake yelling, trying to sit up and being impeded by pain. There was something wet on his stomach, on his chest--he tore it away. _Just cloth,_ some part of his brain told him. _Just wet cloth._ The people—they looked like girls—fled instantly, and Thor felt sorry for scaring them. Or rather, he felt like he _ought_ to feel sorry for scaring them, but he was too shaken and disoriented to process the situation correctly. They hadn’t been hurting him. So why had he felt…

He tried to put a name to that bizarre panic. _Fear?_ Thor had never been afraid of being touched, not even by his enemies.

Thor looked around for any immediate threats, but he seemed to be alone. He was still in the Hulk’s room, on the floor instead of the bed. From the waist down he felt dry and numb—they’d cleaned him up and treated his fractured hip and even put his pants back on him.

He got to his feet, his heart thudding heavily, outpacing his lungs. He wasn’t restrained—wasn’t cuffed to a table or a cart or a chair. Too many times on this planet he’d woken up unable to move. At least now, he could walk, though his back and his legs were stiff. His abdomen felt hollow and cold, and his hip ached faintly—but obviously he’d been given something to soothe the worst of the pain. _Walk it off,_ Steve Rogers would say. Solid advice.

The rest of his gladiator gear was on the floor and he picked up his armor, tugging it on over his head. He startled as he heard a splash of water and realized he wasn’t alone after all—Hulk was there, sitting in a… hot tub?

“…Are we cool?” Thor asked cautiously. 

Hulk grunted, and it sounded peaceable enough.

“How long was I out?” Thor wondered. It seemed to be daylight outside the windows. Morning.

“All night,” Hulk reported.

“Did you sleep at all?” Thor asked, aware of how absurdly domestic that question seemed.

Hulk shook his head no.

“…Thanks for letting me stay here,” Thor said next. “I really didn’t want to go back to, to the other place.”

“Playhouse,” Hulk provided, and Thor tensed.

“You know about that place?” he asked with a sinking feeling.

Hulk nodded, and Thor felt vastly sad. Hulk had seemed so innocent, back on Earth. Angry and destructive, yes, but also innocent. But Hulk had crossed the bridge to Sakaar a long time ago, and as the soothing voice had said in that intro to the planet, there was no going back.

“Hulk, um, I should probably ask you… you want me to stay here because we’re friends, right?”

“Yes,” Hulk confirmed.

“And not just because of what happened last night?”

“Ugh,” Hulk groaned, his shoulders slumping. “Sex…bad,” he grumbled.

Thor’s heart fell a bit more. In spite of everything he hadn’t wanted Hulk to be traumatized.

“With Thor,” Hulk finished, sinking lower in his tub.

Thor tipped his head. “…What?”

“Sex bad with Thor,” Hulk repeated. “Thor too weak. Too puny. Got hurt.” He suddenly looked a bit guilty. “…Sorry,” he added abruptly.

“Hah,” Thor folded his arms, smiling. “Hulk, don’t be sorry. I’m glad you feel that way, actually—I mean, I’m not glad that you thought it was _bad,_ but, I am glad you didn’t enjoy hurting me.”

Hulk shrugged and looked down, glumly, into the water. “Hulk had to. For Grandmaster,” he said.

Thor considered that, considered the position of his enormous friend, sitting so subdued in his giant hot tub. For the Hulk to be so loyal to the Grandmaster, to be either so eager to please him or so well-disciplined to the necessity of pleasing him, meant that Hulk had changed a lot since Thor had last seen him on earth.

A sudden glimmer of light made them both look up in surprise.

“Loki,” Thor recognized, as the shape of his brother appeared in the middle of the room.

“Brother—” Loki started to say, but was interrupted by the Hulk, who roared and launched himself out of the tub. “That’s naked—” Loki took a few steps backwards, bringing up a hand to shield his eyes even as the Hulk’s fists crashed down through him, causing his illusion to flicker.

Thor chuckled a little to himself. “It’s no use, Hulk,” he said with an exaggerated sigh. “He’s not here, it’s just a trick.”

“Hn,” Hulk snarled, trying one last time to smash a fist vertically down on top of Loki’s head. His fist passed harmlessly through the air where Loki still appeared to be standing. Hulk gave up.

“That is…very naked,” Loki repeated, shocked, and the Hulk turned away from him and trudged back into the water, sitting down with a frustrated splash.

“Haha,” Thor looked amused. “It’s in your brain, now.”

Loki looked up at him, incredulous. “Better than it being other places,” he snapped. Suddenly his face creased in concern. “…Did you _actually_ …I mean, are you really all right?”

Now Thor was annoyed. “I’m standing here, aren’t I? Which is more than I can say for you; do you even _have_ a body anymore or are you just this projection now?”

Loki blinked. “The Grandmaster let me have my body back this morning,” he said, and Thor winced at that particular wording. “Though I’d hardly be stupid enough to bring my corporeal self here, to the lair of the Hulk. I don’t enjoy being smashed to a pulp the way some people apparently do.”

Thor let the sides of his eyes crinkle at that.

“Anyway I’m glad you’re alive,” Loki said, in a lame attempt to soften his brash accusation.

“Bullshit,” said Thor.

Loki’s shoulders stiffened. “…Thor, when you got here… I’d thought you were dead for weeks.”

“I thought _you_ were dead for _years,_ ” Thor half-yelled. 

There was a beat. Loki looked away.

“Loki bad,” Hulk growled from the tub.

Thor shook his head, figuring that at least Loki wasn’t spouting excuses. “In any case, now that Hulk’s gotten me out of that brothel and the Grandmaster’s done with us can we please leave?”

Loki shook his head. “Not until I’m done with _him_ ,” he said lowly.

Thor clenched his fists in anger. “Are you out of your mind? Loki, you aren’t in control of this planet and you aren’t a match for him. He’s out of your league. You can’t outmaneuver him. Can’t overpower him. That psychopath is _feeding_ off you and you’re letting him!”

“What is your plan, Thor?” Loki demanded, eyes flashing. He moved to the window and beckoned Thor over. “Come here. Look at the field, at the battle lines. Do you see the scrapyard? The ships? Stealing a ship must be your first step—surely you’ve thought that far?”

“The Quinjet!” Thor exclaimed, looking down and recognizing the little vessel from Earth. That made sense—the last time Hulk had been seen on Earth, he’d been in the Quinjet. It looked intact enough, ready to fly.

“There are constant escape attempts,” Loki informed him. “Ships are stolen and built and cobbled together in every corner, under every roof. Every clan harbors its separatists, its revolutionaries desperate to get out. Every generation mounts its uprising, makes its surge for freedom. And every wave of would-be deserters meets its demise in the arena. How many did you have to kill last time, Champion?” 

Hulk looked startled, but narrowed his eyes in concentration.

“The people who tried to leave, Hulk. How many were there the last time?” Loki insisted.

“Four…six…” Hulk screwed up his face, trying to remember the number. “Four hundred and sixty-six,” he said at last.

Thor’s skin prickled in shock. “Just because they tried to leave?” he asked, horrified.

“Leavers hurt Hulk,” Hulk muttered.

“….how long ago was that?” Thor wondered, remembering suddenly that time worked differently on Sakaar. Hulk shrugged.

“Long time,” he replied.

Thor swallowed, his heart beating faster. “But… surely, just one ship, alone, rather than a wave—one ship could sneak through. Loki, I know you could manage it.”

Loki shook his head. “The exits are sealed. Guarded. Riddled with snares. Watch.”

Sure enough, as Loki pointed, a tiny ramshackle craft lifted off and went streaking towards the nearest wormhole. Thor found himself cheering it on, in his heart— _go, go on, you can make it_ —but as it neared its chosen portal a fleet of other vehicles intercepted it, blasting it to bits. It exploded in a short-lived ball of fire. Thor bit his lip.

“So we go cloaked,” Thor suggested. “The Quinjet has stealth mode. They’ll never see us.”

“It’s not as simple as that,” Loki warned. “The containment measures are multi-tiered. Sometimes he even lets a few dissidents get out for days before yanking them back in. Sometimes he waits for them to reach their home worlds, reunite with their families, and then draws in more people than went out.”

Thor was dumbfounded. “He can do that? What is he?”

Loki blinked. “You mean you haven’t figured it out? He’s an Elder of the Universe.”

“No,” Thor said, brow furrowed. Despite everything he’d seen, that still seemed impossible.

Loki nodded. “I’m afraid it’s true. An Elder of the Universe, sitting on a festering throne of trash, hosting orgies and giggling at gladiators. He is… in decline. It’d be the height of mercy to end his reign.”

“Mercy, or mischief?” Thor challenged.

His brother smiled. “You say I’m not a match for him, but I disagree. He may be an Elder, but I am a god.”

“ _Ugly_ god,” muttered Hulk from the tub.

“Hey.” Loki clapped his hands once, as if to get the attention of a misbehaving puppy, and pointed accusingly at the Hulk. “That was unkind.”

Hulk pouted at the reprimand and sank down further in the water.

Thor rolled his eyes and made use of the Midgardian custom of air-quotes. “Would ‘a god’ at least be able to take this damned disk off another god’s neck?” he requested.

Loki sighed. “Not without the fob that’s keyed to it. And trust me, I’ve tried a hundred ways so far to get around that particular inconvenience. The magic in those disks is… complicated. It’s anchored by a computer system that is immune to magical tampering. If you can’t get your hands on the right individual device, the entire mainframe will have to be manually disabled. And yes, Thor, before you ask, I am working on that.”

“…You’ve tried a hundred ways,” Thor echoed, suspicious. “Who have you tried it on?”

Loki stared at him and then furiously wrenched up one of his sleeves, sticking out a pale forearm for Thor to inspect. There was a telltale circle of pinpricks on the inside of his wrist, a dark web of burnt-out looking veins radiating out around it, snaking up towards the crook of his elbow. “Who do you think?” he hissed, pulling his sleeve back down. “Did you think I’d purchased a slave??”

“I wouldn’t put it past you,” Thor said, being a little too honest. “You once tried to enslave an entire planet.”

“Have you still not heard my side of the story, pertaining to those events?” Loki wondered, exasperated, and Thor realized that no, he really had not. They’d never talked about it. “In any case, will you _please_ stay out of the way, and let me work?” Loki implored him. “I know what I’m doing.”

Thor shook his head, angry now. “Like you knew what you were doing with the Tesseract? Like you knew what you were doing when you practically held the door open for our sister to get to Asgard? Did you know what you were doing when you died in front of me on Svartalfheim?”

Loki had the decency to look at least a little bit stricken.

“Fartle-heim,” Hulk chuckled from the tub. “Heh heh.”

Loki stared out the window again. “…Sakaar is ripe for revolution,” he told Thor evenly. “They only need… inspiration. Direction. And someone on the inside, who can destabilize the infrastructure, undermine the Grandmaster himself. An instigator. I have plans in the works that will change this place so that anyone who wants to can leave it safely, including us. But you have to be patient. If you act out now the Grandmaster’s attention will be drawn to both of us like iron to a magnet. So please, brother, if there is any chance that I am any of the things you thought I was when I died in front of you… then stay here, and wait.”

He disappeared in order to ensure that he’d have the last word.

“I thought you were a fool,” Thor said to the empty air. “And I’d say there’s still a good chance of that.”

He scrubbed his hand around the back of his neck, scratched at the disk. “…How about you, Hulk?” he asked after a minute. “Are you ready to get out of here?”

 

Hulk, unfortunately, wanted to stay. Thor tried to leave on his own; the door appeared to be open. A forcefield dropped him the second he touched the threshold. Hulk thought that was hilarious.

Thor paced the apartment the rest of the morning, absently rubbing his sore hip. The numbness of the lower half of his body persisted, which he decided was probably for the best.

Hulk took a restless nap, eventually thrashing himself awake from a nightmare. He sat in his bed for a while, cast a couple of exceedingly guilty-looking glances at Thor, and gathered his armor. He was off for training. Thor told him to have fun.

Val arrived to escort the Hulk to the arena and Thor missed his chance to speak to her. Val had one of the fob devices keyed to Thor’s disk—that device could free him. Loki could lift it from her, maybe—except Loki was too busy with his current power-mongering delusions. Thor would just have to convince the Valkyrie to help him, or… or something.

He didn’t know what to do; didn’t know how to proceed. He wished there was someone, anyone, he could call on for aid. Then he remembered Heimdall—and this time, he got through.

Speaking with Heimdall and seeing the situation on Asgard reenergized him, and Heimdall even told him which doorway to go through: _the big one._ Thor staggered back to his senses in the Hulk’s room, slightly out of breath. It was night; all the red in the room had dulled to black and the white now shone a cool blue from the light of the city outside. Hulk still hadn’t returned.

“Welcome back.”

The unmistakable accent made Thor jump; he’d thought he was alone. She was standing in the shadows near the wall, statuesque in her heavy armor. She held the Grandmaster’s Melt-stick in one hand, and a fob device in the other.

_Topaz._

Thor scanned the room. There were two more guards at the door, also heavily armored. The Grandmaster, thankfully, was not present.

“Oh, them?” Topaz asked, seeing that Thor had noticed the guards. “The boss asked me to post them. Figured you might get into trouble if you were left all alone.”

Thor realized his heart was pounding. He raised his hands a little, keeping his eyes on Topaz. There was a sizable collection of weapons in the room, but none within reach.

“So what were you doing just now?” Topaz wondered. “Meditation?”

“Um, sort of,” Thor admitted. “I was thinking about my home. My people.”

“That’s sweet,” Topaz said, mockingly. “Most of them do that, the first couple years.”

Thor thought quickly. Made the only decision he could make. “…Did you?” he asked.

“What’s that?”

“…Did you think of your people, when you first…when you were new here?” Thor wondered, keeping his voice low and measured.

Topaz narrowed her eyes at him. “Only when I was killing the ones who fell through with me,” she said. “Which didn’t take long.”

Thor swallowed. “Are you from a bad place, then?” he ventured. “Somewhere you wanted to forget?”

“How’d you guess?” Topaz deadpanned, a grin curling up her cheeks. “Did my personality give it away?”

“No,” Thor said mildly. “You just don’t seem to hate it here as much as some others… so maybe you came from somewhere worse.”

“You got that right,” Topaz granted. She moved across the room, but not towards Thor. She sat down heavily on one of the couches, holding the Melt-stick imperiously, oddly reminiscent of Odin with Gungnir. “I was serving a life sentence aboard a prison scow, hard labor, mining asteroids. For murder and petty crimes—I was a juvenile at the time. Ten years of hell, then wormhole, Contest, job offer, and… here I am.”

“…The second most powerful person on Sakaar,” Thor mentioned with a touch of respect. He had watched Loki weasel his way out of trouble enough times to know that a little flattery might not go amiss.

Topaz’s grin curled further. “ _Second?_ ” she challenged. “Then who the fuck is the first?”

“Um… your boss?” Thor said without thinking.

“He couldn’t find a biscuit at a buffet without my help,” Topaz scoffed. “You might have noticed he’s missing a few screws. That’s because I’m unscrewing them myself, one at a time, however I see fit.”

Thor nodded slowly, impressed. “…Have you talked to my brother?” he asked carefully.

“I don’t talk to the Grandmaster’s slices of cake,” Topaz said haughtily. “I just serve them up.”

Thor let that chilling analogy slide for the moment. “…Is there a chance you’re… planning a coup or something?”

Topaz laughed. “That would make you happy, wouldn’t it? But no, I’m not. Life is good for me as long as he’s in power. I’ll be keeping him around, propping him up at least as a puppet, for as long as I can.”

“…Why are you telling me this?” Thor was fully aware that this was the sort of unveiling-of-the-evil-plan that villains tended to do before they tried to kill you.

But Topaz only shrugged. “I dunno,” she said. “Guess I’m just _in the mood_.”

Thor’s throat clenched a little. “Would you like a drink?” he offered, moving towards the liquor shelves. Maybe he could keep her talking until the Hulk came back. There wasn’t a fight tonight; his training session couldn’t last forever.

Topaz was smirking at him. “Pour it,” she ordered, and Thor found the correct-sized glass. His hand shook only a little as he filled it with what smelled like alcohol.

She was waiting on the couch, watching him as he carried the drink over to where she sat. He held it out to her, as politely as he could.

“Now drink it,” she commanded. Thor hesitated. “I told you to pour it; but I never said I wanted it,” Topaz mocked. “Now I say, _drink it,_ slave. Whole thing. Knock it back.”

Being reminded that he was still a slave turned something in his mind to stone. He raised the glass to his lips and drank. He’d felt cold in his core all day—now the alcohol in his empty stomach filled him with heat. He remembered perfectly well what Topaz and her guards had tried to do to him after the fight. Remembered her blistering his skin with the rifle and paralyzing him with the disk. Now she was twirling the fob device in her fingers. He could lunge for it, grab it, wrestle it away from her—but he didn’t. _Couldn’t._

His hand on the glass was trembling. He hoped Topaz didn’t notice.

“You want this, don’t you?” Topaz asked, waggling the fob device. “I know you do. But I also know you’re smart enough not to make a move. You’ve been tamed.”

“You’re right,” Thor admitted. “But I still want to leave this place and go home.”

Topaz shook her head in disapproval, but not surprise. “Maybe you’re still a bit wild after all,” she muttered. “Need a little more training.”

Thor stood in front of her, bathed in blue light from the city below. She sat back into shadow, her armored knees and boots the only part of her that remained clearly visible. “Come here,” she told him. “Sit down.”

He could blast her with lightning. There wasn’t a collar on him anymore—he could be fast enough to summon his power before she hit the button to prevent him. He could clench his fists and ignite with energy, with light—he could kill her right now where she sat. But those thoughts seemed foreign and far away, like they belonged to someone else.

“You’re shaking like a leaf,” Topaz snickered at him. “Don’t worry. I’m not gonna touch you. If I’d take anyone’s sloppy seconds, it wouldn’t be the Hulk’s.”

That was scarcely a reassurance, but Thor forced out a breath and sat beside her on the couch, hyper-aware of how every muscle twinged as he lowered himself onto the cushions.

Topaz positioned the Melt-stick so it balanced across her knees, the globe at the end facing Thor. “Do y’know I was rooting for you?” she said abruptly.

It took a minute for Thor to process what she’d said. “…you what?” he asked, hoarse.

“Sure, you pissed me off,” Topaz went on. “Killing my boys like you did. But before that, in the arena, fighting the Champion, I thought—now, here’s a tough one. He’s not gonna quit.”

Thor wasn’t sure yet what to make of this. “It was a good match,” he said blankly.

“Then, later, you were stubborn. No matter what we tried, you fought back. You were out like a light and still holding us off. You were unfuckable. And I started to think—how much I wanted that to be true. That there could be one truly unfuckable thing on this planet. When Xex got that collar on you and you did that thing with the air—made that boom, that bang—busted my eardrums—all of that so you wouldn’t get fucked. I was cheering you on at that point. I’d never seen anything so _defeated_ put up so much of a fight.”

She heaved a sigh, and stood up from the couch, her armor clacking at little. Thor stayed where he was, watching her solemnly. He knew he had this effect on people from time to time; persistence in the face of adversity could make even the most calloused warriors take note, and occasionally made an adversary sympathetic to him. Loki had once complained that only Thor could make his enemies _fond_ of him for killing them.

“…But I guess you got fucked after all,” said Topaz, her voice flat and cold.

Thor felt a strange twist of pity for her—he hadn’t been the unbreakable, infallible thing she’d wanted to believe in. It occurred to him that despite her disappointment in him now, maybe there was still something there, something that could convince her to help him.

Then he remembered the other woman on this planet whose friendship he’d been trying to win. “Topaz, may I ask you a question?”

She looked minorly offended at a slave’s presumption in using her name, but nodded. “Go ahead.”

“Why do you hate Scrapper 142?” Thor wondered.

Topaz squinted at him. “Got a soft spot for that one, have you? I recruited her for a job once, made her my lieutenant in the Palace Guard. She showed up to work each day drunker than the day before, made a disgraceful mess of her whole cohort. I told her to clean up her act and she quit instead. I can’t stand quitters like that. And she was a bad lay.”

Thor’s eyebrows bolted up.

“According to the rumors, at least,” Topaz went on with a smirk. “Fucked her way through my guards without a care in the world—quick and mean and not an ounce of respect. I never fucked her myself. She’s not my type.” 

Her eyes zig-zagged across Thor’s torso in a way that made it pretty obvious what type she preferred. Then she raised her eyes to the doorway. “Speak of the devil,” she said. “Or in this case, the booze-hag.”

Thor glanced over his shoulder and saw both Hulk and Val approaching. Relief washed over him—even if Val wasn’t his friend ( _yet,_ he told himself stubbornly), he was glad to see them both.

Val stiffened as she noticed Topaz in the room, her eyes glazing over with distrust.

“Thor home?” Hulk asked, discarding his armor as he moved into the room.

“Right here, Hulk,” Thor spoke up from the couch. Hulk nodded at him and then blinked at Topaz, confused.

“Why Topaz here?” he wondered.

“What a good question,” Val said with false sweetness. “Why _is_ that bitch here?”

“That bitch was just telling this whore what a quitter you are, slag.” Topaz sneered back at Val. “Although I guess you managed to get the job done with _him_. That pretty cock he’s got must’ve been just enough to motivate you.”

“You can leave now,” Val replied. “Isn’t that right, big guy?”

“Topaz can leave,” Hulk huffed. Topaz grinned. She switched to a two-handed grip on the Melt-stick, angling the globe towards Val’s chest.

“Pitiful as a Scrapper, _useless_ as a Palace Guard. A quitter and a drunk, didn’t make rank as a whore yourself—who could’ve guessed you’d be such an expert at training slaves to spread their legs? You made this unfuckable piece of Asgardian ass into the whore of the year, the Grandmaster’s birthday present, and the personal bed slave of the Champion himself. To train him for all that—I wonder how you did it. I wonder how long it took you to figure out the Champion’s… needs.”

Even in the dim light Thor could see Val had gone rigid with outrage, the cords in her neck looking taut enough to snap.

Topaz turned to Hulk with a savage smile. “ _Did she get you drunk first, Hulk?!_ ” she called out. “We all know that’s one of her methods.”

“Out,” Val choked, looking like she might be on the verge of either combustion or collapse. “Get out.”

“Topaz go,” Hulk said in a chillingly serious voice.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m going,” Topaz said, marching to the door. Just past the threshold she looked back at Val. “Next time the boss needs a whore tested out or widened up, I’ll give the expert a call.” She chuckled to herself and stomped away.

Val stood frozen in place, feet squared, fists clenched at her sides, staring off into the dark.

“Angry Girl… angry,” Hulk explained solemnly to Thor.

Thor got up slowly from the couch. “Val—” he attempted to say. Her head jerked up.

“Scrapper,” she corrected. “I’m a Scrapper. I catch people who fall through—lost people, frightened people. Strong people if I’m lucky. I sell them. They die and I drink.” Her eyes came up and she looked for a long moment at her big green friend—and then locked eyes with Thor. “But I never fucked the Hulk,” she said.

Thor bit his lip, weighing that. “…That makes one of us,” he said.

The silence lasted a beat too long. Her breathing was shorter, faster, and every two or three breaths she swallowed. “How can you be so,” she shook her head. “It isn’t funny. Why are you _still_ … why aren’t you furious?” she demanded at last.

“I _am_ furious,” Thor said right away. “I’m furious at my brother, though that’s been more-or-less a constant, in my life—I’m furious at Topaz, for saying those things just now. I’m furious at the Grandmaster, for making my friend do things he didn’t want to do, for abusing his power, for allowing slavery on his planet, and for killing countless innocent people in his games. I’m furious at myself for not figuring out a way out of this.”

“And me?” Val demanded. “Do you care at all about anything I’ve done?”

“Of course I care,” Thor said, slowly, carefully. “…And I’m furious at you, too.”

A calm came over her, like a tide quietly going out. “Good,” she said, catching her breath. “Good. Because you fucking should be.” She turned to leave.

“Wait, please,” Thor said gently. “We need to talk.”

“No,” she said, annoyed. “You want to talk to me.”

Hulk had wandered up towards his bed, and Thor called up to him. “Hulk, I need her to stay.”

Hulk grunted and tore off the top jawbone of the animal skull that framed his bed, flinging it across the room to block the door. “Stay…please?” Hulk asked.

“Please,” Thor echoed.

He told her Odin was dead. Told her Hela had invaded Asgard. He got as close to her as he dared, and then closer, holding her eyes with his own. He dared to brush her arm with his fingertips and she lined up the points of her knives with the underside of his chin. Gently, he moved her blades away, still talking to her. Telling her he agreed with her about the _golden sham_ of Asgard. This wasn't about the crown. 

He asked her one more time to help him, because the people were dying, and they were her people too. And when she refused, he stole her fob device, and freed himself from slavery.

 

He escaped. Hulk was furious, chasing after Thor with tears streaking his big green face. The Quinjet was destroyed—the Hulk disappeared. _That seductive lord of thunder has stolen him away,_ announced the Grandmaster. Bruce Banner was freaking out.

Thor was in the thick of it now--dodging in and out of alleys in the middle of the city with a towel on his head and a human, a brilliantly intelligent, but very distressed human, by his side.

The Valkyrie found him in the middle of that chaos and something was different about her—Thor had no idea what had caused her change of heart; he was only glad it had happened. She said she couldn’t turn away anymore. She wanted to be on his team. She’d captured his brother, who was being an absolute sea urchin, and she knew a way out—they could get to Xandar, and then to Asgard, in eighteen months.

_Nope._ They were going through the big one. Of course it was called _The Devil’s Anus;_ why wouldn’t it be? Apparently Loki thought that was the cleverest thing he’d ever heard, the kind of thing he could bring up and mention offhand to get under everyone’s (but mostly Thor’s) skin for the rest of eternity. Thor suspected Loki’d have some kind of song made up about it by the end of the day; an epic poem published by the end of the week. _Thor Odinson’s Adventure Through the Anus,_ a new classic of literature.

Despite being the worst little brother in the history of siblinghood, Loki did agree to help them catalyze the incipient revolution and steal an _Anus-worthy_ ship from the Grandmaster’s garage. Scuttling along after Thor in the corridors he made sure to voice his dissatisfaction with how this was all playing out; it wasn’t how Loki would have done it despite it being Loki’s exact plan for disabling the mainframe, his exact plan for accessing the hangar, his exact plan for pushing the latest generation of rebels into full-scale insurgency. Thor was still doing it completely wrong, according to his brother.

“Will you stop being a pain in the ass?” Thor muttered as he checked around the next corner for the presence of guards.

“Don’t you mean a pain in the _ain_ —ahgk!” the back of Loki’s head hit the wall as Thor went straight for his throat.

“…all right I sort of deserved that,” Loki conceded. Thor looked down, where the edge of a blade had just carved an inch-long scratch into his armor, just under the ribs. Loki pulled the knife away and made it vanish from his hand. “…I actually love you very much,” Loki said.

It felt like old times, and Thor struggled through a wave of sadness. They’d done this all before, and Thor didn’t want to do it anymore. He let his brother go, took a step back. “Then help me save our people,” he said, and Loki gave him the most earnest look, a look Thor knew all too well. The rest of their conversation on the way to the hangar was tense, full of snark, Thor barely able to keep it to himself that he knew what was coming.

And then it happened—the inevitable betrayal. Thor had been expecting it and had taken precautions. _Why are you like this?_ Thor wondered of his brother for the millionth time. Loki was Loki.

“But you could be more,” Thor told him. And left him behind.

Thor and Bruce and Val made it onto the Commodore. The mention of the Grandmaster’s orgies didn’t amuse Thor in the least. “Don’t touch anything,” he grumbled to Bruce, failing to contain his disgust.

They jumped through the wormhole to Asgard and waged war against the Goddess of Death, evacuating the survivors onto the ship that Loki had brought them. When challenged to help save people, Loki certainly didn't hold back.

At last, Thor remembered the prophecy. Ragnarok. The end of the world. 

“...What have I done?” Thor wondered aloud on the bridge, watching his home disintegrate into waves of plasma. He focused his one remaining eye on the reflection in the window in front of him just in time to see Val and Loki exchanging a glance behind his back. He didn’t care if they knew that he felt this weight—the responsibility was his, for all of it, for everything that had happened and for all that would happen next.

Thor was the King--even if he didn’t want to be. He would survive.

He’d been through worse.


	10. Air for breathing

Chapter 10: Air for breathing

 

Thor was alone in his cabin, his single eye staring out into space. This ship had been their home for a week already. Asgard was gone, Hela was gone, Ragnarok was complete. It was over, it was done.

But he still dreamed of flames.

He didn’t know what was worse anymore, sleeping or waking up—every time he woke up now was an instant of terrifying transition, like the jaws of a trap snapping shut. What was he still afraid of?

Annoyed, he rubbed the heel of his palm against his mostly-healed eye socket and reached for his eyepatch. It was time to ask for help.

He found his brother on the bridge, standing beside the captain’s chair and studying the stars with his arms across his chest. He looked worried. “…You aren’t the only one who can’t sleep,” Loki said before Thor even opened his mouth. “The whole ship has insomnia.”

Thor stepped up beside him, mirroring his pose, the captain’s chair vacant between them. “Maybe it’s the lighting,” Thor suggested cheerfully, looking around at the ceiling. “It’s too…artificial. Too white.”

Loki shrugged and the lighting shifted to mimic the colors of sunset, gold and red. “Better?” he asked.

Thor sighed. “Clever trick, but now it just looks like the ship’s on fire.”

The light changed back, and maybe it was just that harsh white, but Thor thought Loki looked a little paler than usual.

“You know,” Thor began carefully, not wanting to overburden his brother. “I’ve been having these dreams about Ragnarok.”

“So have I,” Loki admitted.

“Oh,” said Thor in surprise. “…I guess that means you can’t…get rid of them?”

Loki shook his head. There was a pause, a beat of silence. Thor felt a tiny ripple of disappointment.

“I’m sorry,” Loki blurted out.

Thor wanted to reach out and pat his brother on the shoulder for that, but the distance between them was just a little too far. It had almost sounded like the kind of ‘sorry’ for something Loki hadn’t quite done yet, the ‘sorry’ for the prank on the other side of the door Thor was about to open. But Thor didn’t even mind—this past week, Loki had been indispensable, had been genuinely trying to help. There was no room on this crowded ship for a person who wanted to cause problems rather than fix them, and Loki seemed to know it.

“It’s all right,” Thor assured him. “I know you’d help if you could.”

“I could knock you out,” Loki offered. “Half the population has already asked me for that much.”

“Really?” Thor frowned. “Just—you’re rendering people unconscious?”

Loki shrugged. “I’m sure it’s not as healthy as falling asleep naturally, but better than lying awake in endless grief. It won’t stop the dreams though.”

“It’s the waking up that’s the worst part,” Thor confessed. “There’s a split-second where I think that maybe I’m still trapped on Sakaar or something. Do you…” he considered his brother, who seemed to be holding very still. “Is that happening to you too?”

“Not anymore,” Loki said, and Thor tilted his head in confusion. “And not from Sakaar, in my case. But I do know what you mean. You woke up a few times as a prisoner. Immobilized. Isolated. Maybe you even woke up when they were only halfway done with you. That… makes an impression in your mind.”

Thor knew there was something large lurking at the edges of this conversation, but wasn’t sure yet if he wanted to draw it out. He tapped a forefinger against his temple. “Can’t you just put a spell in my brain so the first thing I know when I wake up is that I’m safe?”

Loki gave him a long, searching look. “…That could be complicated,” he said, which wasn’t strictly a ‘no.’ “There’s a reason why you feel that sense of danger. I don’t want to rewrite your reality.”

“But the reality is that I’m safe,” Thor protested.

“The reality is that you _weren’t_ safe. What you’re feeling now is the consequence, the aftermath.”

“What’s the worst they could have done, kill me?” Thor asked with a touch of bravado. “And Hulk actually tried to kill me in the arena. I made it out fine.”

Loki looked at him. “Have you heard that joke on Midgard?” he asked. “About the river in Egypt?”

Thor rolled his one remaining eye. “I’m not _denying_ what happened,” he insisted. “I just don’t want to keep remembering it. Especially not in that moment when I’m not fully awake and can’t…deal with it.”

Loki was looking at him with more sympathy than Thor had ever seen from him before. “…It takes time, Thor,” he said softly.

“Magic doesn’t,” Thor countered.

Loki bristled, and then made an obvious effort to put his guard back down. “I’m not going to magically alter the way your brain processes trauma. It would change who you are.”

“I’d still be your brother,” Thor said with half a shrug.

“Never and always,” Loki replied.

“Ever,” Thor chose to mishear him. “And always.”

“Ick.” Loki scrunched up his nose. “When did we start being so nice to each other?”

“Last week,” Thor answered brightly. “Thought you’d recall--there was a hug involved, little bit of crying?”

“Oh, that,” Loki said, his tone exactly halfway between dismissive and warm. “In any case, I don’t have the magical cure you’re looking for. You have to make peace with what happened before you can move on.”

“Make peace?” There was something deeply ironic about Loki, of all creatures, being the one to lecture him about making peace.

“I know what you’re going through,” Loki told him, matter of fact. A shadow crossed his face, immediately chased by a smile. “Do you remember, when you were fighting the Hulk, and he was—” Loki mimicked the motion, like swatting a fly with an invisible cloth in his hand. “--bashing you against the ground?”

Thor gave him a wincing grin. “Ha, of course. Who could forget?”

“Right. In that moment, I was glad that you knew how that felt.”

“…But?” Thor prompted, curious.

“But I am not glad, in fact I’m infinitely sorry, that we have other violent experiences in common.”

So that was it—the dark thing on the periphery of this conversation had been invited into the light after all. Thor was taken aback by how much he didn’t want to think about it, didn’t want to confront it. He’d not only failed to protect himself, he’d failed to protect his brother too?

Loki must’ve seen that on his face. “It wasn’t your fault, Thor,” he said softly. “And we aren’t the only ones—you should talk to Bruce. In his short life as a mortal, in his extremely brief childhood—”

“ _Childhood?_ ” Thor repeated, distraught.

Loki changed tack. “Then talk to the Valkyrie. She grew up as we did but has had a thousand years more practice at suffering.”

“She won’t talk to me,” Thor muttered, disheartened. “Hasn’t said a word to me since that first night on board.”

Loki knit his brows. “…And what did she say then?”

Thor waved a palm at the empty captain’s chair. “She said, ‘here’s your throne’ or something, that was all. I found her cabin the day after that but Hulk was guarding the door, said she’d told him not to let me in.” 

“You let her get away with that?” Loki seemed perplexed. “You’re her King. She can’t just hide behind the Hulk if you want to speak to her.”

“I hope I’m not the sort of King who’d barge in on one of my subjects when I’m not wanted,” Thor replied, honestly dismayed that his brother didn’t understand that innately.

“So you recognize she is one of your _subjects,_ I suppose that’s something,” Loki muttered, and then a stray thought crossed his face. “By the way,” he mentioned. “I’m one of your subjects too.”

Thor scrunched up his face. “ _Pfft._ No, you’re not.”

“ _Technically,_ and, voluntarily, I am,” Loki insisted. “You should order me to research the nightmares.”

“But you’ve already tried that; you said they’ve been bothering you too.” 

“Tell me to look into it again,” Loki suggested. “I think it might… make me think of it differently. Since my more selfish approaches haven’t yielded anything so far.”

“Fine.” Thor couldn’t imagine what difference it could make, but if Loki needed some external pressure to re-attack the problem, Thor may as well provide it. “Please see if you can figure out why we’re having these blasted dreams, and if there’s any way to stop them.”

Loki nodded, pleased. “I’ll do my best.”

 

Val showed up at his cabin just a few hours later, her Dragonfang sword in one hand and a bottle of liquor in the other. “Oh, hello,” Thor said as he opened the door.

“I hate your brother,” Val said to his chest, instead of his face. She was wearing her Scrapper’s outfit from Sakaar; she had put that back on immediately after the makeshift coronation ceremony, that first night in space.

“…Would you like to come in?” Thor asked, stepping aside.

“No,” she said, moving past him into the room anyway. She slammed the sword flat onto the table, making Thor jump a little at the bang.

“Hey, be careful,” Thor protested. “Isn’t that an antique?”

“You calling me old?” Val demanded. She nodded at the sideboard with her chin. “Two glasses,” she said. Thor promptly fetched them and brought them over to the table. She set the bottle down with only slightly more care than she’d shown for her weapon, uncorked it, and poured a half glass for Thor and a full glass for herself. Thor smiled at her a little with the eye he had left.

“Have a seat,” she told him, pulling out a chair and taking a seat herself. She kicked one of her boots up onto the table and took a swallow from her glass, watching him sit down.

“Stop doing everything I tell you to do,” she said dangerously. “I don’t fucking own you.”

“Anymore,” Thor said, though of course that was unnecessary.

“Six days on this ship,” Val said, shaking her head. “I can’t stand the way these people look at me. They have no fucking idea, no clue at all, who I am or what I’ve done. What I did to you.”

“…They know you helped me escape from Sakaar,” Thor mentioned.

She rolled her eyes and drank. “And who’s going to tell them about the rest of it? The truth of it? You? Aren’t you the King who’s _done_ with all the lies and secrets? Half these people are treating me like a goddess, the other half are treating me like a queen. They should be treating me like a criminal. I sold slaves for drinking money. _Slaves._ ”

“We can tell the people whatever you want,” Thor said carefully.

“What do _you_ want?” Val demanded.

“I…want to make peace with what happened on Sakaar,” Thor realized, giving a mental nod of gratitude to his brother.

“I’m supposed to help you with that?” Val scoffed. “I think I remember I had you inside me at one point. I bet you liked it.”

“I liked _you_ ,” Thor said.

She stared at him. “Why the fuck would you say something like that,” she asked at last.

Thor looked down at the liquid in his glass and gave it a swirl before taking a sip. “You were…honest with me. I could tell that you had the potential to be a hero.”

“A hero?” she pounced on the word. “You’re as bad as the rest of these ignorant peasants. One tattoo on my arm and suddenly I can do no wrong, I’m everyone’s _hero._ Did I seem like a hero while I was raping you?”

Thor kept his expression as soft as he could. “Not at that particular moment, no,” he admitted.

She made a sound of disgust and took a gulp of her drink. “Congratulations, I guess, for being right—I put that costume back on, helped you kill your sister, helped you destroy Asgard, helped herd this remnant of our civilization onto this ship—I guess that made me a hero in your eyes, didn’t it? Mission accomplished, for you—turned Scrapper 142 back into a Valkyrie. Straight out of one of the storybooks in your golden nursery.”

Thor gave her a patient nod.

“It isn’t enough,” she complained, her voice rising. “The actions of one day against the actions of countless thousands of days, don’t you understand?”

He sat for a minute, considering. “I understand you…feel bad?” he ventured. “For everything on Sakaar?”

“What would be the fucking point of that?!” Her voice shuddered, nearly breaking in the middle as she cursed. “It doesn’t change a single day that I lived. Doesn’t undo a single thing that I did.”

“I know we can’t change the past,” Thor kept his voice low. “But the present, and the future, is ours to build.”

“We have nothing. What do you think we’ll be building?”

“Relationships,” Thor said. “Friendships. Families. A new home. To replace what we’ve lost.”

“Some things are irreplaceable,” she told him. “I thought you were old enough to know that much, at least.”

He sighed, quietly. “You’re right. I shouldn’t have said ‘replace’. We’ll build to _recover_ —the people we’ve lost would want us to do that, I’m sure.” 

“Yeah,” Val said, looking away. “They would.” She drained her glass and clunked it heavily on the table. “You want that sword?”

She tilted her head towards the Dragonfang, and Thor glanced at it in surprise.

“You were drooling all over it in my apartment,” Val recalled. “It’s yours if you want it.”

He frowned. “I can’t--it’s a sword for a Valkyrie. I haven’t earned it.”

“You want to earn it?” She unsheathed a long dagger. “Stand up.”

A moment ago she’d told him to stop obeying her, so he stayed where he was. A blink went by and he saw in her eyes the instant it dawned on her exactly why he was remaining in his seat. He gave her a small fond smile—with maybe a tiny hint of stubbornness.

Swift as a viper she hooked a foot around the leg of his chair, jerking it out from under him so he crashed to the floor. She grabbed the Dragonfang by the hilt with one hand and whipped it out horizontally from her body, so fast that the scabbard flew off the blade and went clattering across the room.

Thor brought his forearms up to cover his head as she slashed the sword down—he couldn’t believe she would try to kill him now, not after everything they’d been through. And sure enough, the sword stopped at the side of his face. He dared to lower his arms from their defensive position.

She touched the tip of her sword to the edge of his eyepatch, and with one tiny motion, she flicked the patch off his face. She pointed her sword at the pale skin healing in the space where his eye had been. “Get this through your thick head,” she said. “What you lose, you don’t ever get back. What’s gone is gone.”

“ _I’m_ not gone,” Thor said quietly.

She blinked.

“ _You’re_ not gone,” Thor added. “Everything that’s left is still worth protecting. Including you.”

“Fight me,” she ordered, with one of the universe’s oldest provocations: she tap-tapped the side of his cheek with the flat of her sword.

“I don’t want to fight you.” He gazed up at her, still flat on his back. He felt oddly naked now without that eyepatch, but of course she’d seen him naked before.

“You wanted to fight plenty on Sakaar,” she mentioned. “Every minute. Every second that you were helpless, you wanted nothing more than to fight back, didn’t you? Now you’ll lie there and let me walk all over you? It’s disgusting. I could spit on you. Again.”

“Go ahead,” Thor dared her, and scrunched his good eye closed as she pursed her lips and aimed for his face.

It was a shockingly wet little _splat,_ right across that empty socket. Thor’s hand immediately came up, his fingers wiping the spit away from his missing eye, away from the side of his face. He made a noise that was half a chuckle. She was still standing over him, staring down at him in contempt.

“All right,” he said, sitting up. “Give me your sword.”

She flipped it in the air and he caught it by the hilt, still sitting on the floor. “It’s light,” he observed, impressed all over again by the elegance of the legendary weapon.

“It’s not a fucking hammer,” she said in derision.

“No, it’s not,” Thor agreed with a sigh. He held it up at an angle across his body, and gave her a little nod.

She attacked.

Thor knew she had a thousand years more experience at suffering or whatever Loki had said about her, but Thor had at least a thousand years of experience at losing control of his emotions, and he recognized that she was out of control right now. Raging, wild, as violent as the Hulk. Maybe she’d even fought the Hulk once when she was in a state like this—the name ‘Angry Girl’ would’ve been well-earned, in that case. She was as strong as a storm, which was an energy Thor could handle.

So he let her rage. He held off her assaults, her kicks and jabs and slashes. He wasn’t sure if she was fighting to win or to lose—to hurt him, or to hurt herself. He let her push him back against the wall, circle him around the room.

He found he liked the Dragonfang; it was as effortless to wield as he’d always dreamed it would be. Weapons-masters and fighting instructors were forever burdening Thor with tedious broadswords, as long as he was tall, insisting he had the arms for them. Thor had never liked them much. The Dragonfang was closer in length to Mjolnir, which suited him much better. And he was well-acquainted with fending off an assailant equipped with two daggers; his brother was a great deal taller than she was but a lot of her double-bladed moves were as familiar as old friends. _It’s three lefts in a row, left-left-left,_ he remembered a scrawny adolescent Loki scolding him, ages ago—a stab to his left side punctuating each correction.

He almost smiled, distracted by that distant memory, and she managed to disarm him at last. He put his hands up, breathing hard. “Well fought,” he said right away, as if this were some match in a formal competition.

Her eyes were still so dark. Lost. What was she thinking? She grabbed one of his hands and pressed something round and metallic to his palm. He knew what it was.

 _No_ —his heart dropped, and the pressure in the room with it—the structure of the ship groaned in the faintest impression of thunder. But before he could recoil she slapped his palm, with the disk in its center, against the side of her own neck. Her eyes squeezed shut in pain as the tiny ring of needles bit into her skin, latching on. She pulled his palm away from her neck and pressed a controller into his hand.

She dropped to her knees, tiny in front of him. “Do it,” she said.

A little bit of lightning skittered between his fingers, making just enough of a staticky buzz to make her shoulders clench forward. Thor froze in horror—she thought he’d zapped her?!

“I want you to,” she was saying now. “I want you to turn it on and never turn it off. Let me ride it out to the end.”

“What,” Thor could not think of a single other word.

“You know the setting—on max, but not out. Leave me awake for it. I want to feel the whole thing. Turn it on.”

Thor shook his head, still at a loss for words.

“Turn it on,” she begged through clenched teeth. “I’m ready for it. I’m so fucking ready. I deserve it. Give it to me.”

Thor’s hands were almost shaking too much to find the right button—but at last he got it. The disk unlatched from her neck and he caught it before it hit the floor. He held the two horrible devices together—the disk and the controller—and then cupped his hands together.

He yelled—lightning surged through his arms and into the space between his palms, until it looked like he held a ball of white-hot energy, so bright that all the bones of his hands were visible from the light shining through his flesh. Wisps of smoke leaked from between his fingers, and he felt the hateful things vaporize to nothingness.

The lightning fizzled out. His palms looked a little scorched, but the disk and the controller were totally gone.

Val was staring up at him, uncomprehending. He crouched down and put his hands around her arms, which felt so small in his grasp, despite their awesome strength. He picked her up by the arms, and then instinctively pulled her to his chest. Her feet were off the ground. She’d gone limp against him.

“I’m so sorry,” he mumbled to her. He hugged her tighter, buried his face against her neck. He knew it was too intimate but he did it anyway—he pressed his lips against the little circle left by the teeth of the disk. He kissed it. 

“Val,” he breathed. “I am sorry. You don’t have to be a Valkyrie. I should never have brought you that uniform. You don’t have to be anyone’s hero. We can tell the people whatever they need to know. We can tell them the truth. They can hate you if they need to. I can…I can condemn all your crimes, I can call you a criminal. But you will never, ever, put one of those things on a person ever again—not on anyone else, and not on yourself. Do you understand?”

She went stiff for a moment and he just held on to her—and finally felt her nod.

“Good,” he said in a rush. “Torture won’t undo torture,” he said, lowering her to her feet. He brought his hands to the sides of her face, his thumbs gently smoothing the places under her eyes where years of white paint had left miniscule pale stains. “…I thought you were old enough to know that much, at least.”

Her eyes lit up in recognition that he was recycling her words back to her, gently, with…love.

It wasn’t the time for this, it was inappropriate, she wasn’t in her right mind and maybe he wasn’t either. They were both too stressed. He just wanted to kiss her. Just wanted her savage mouth on his, tearing his denial and his delusions and his expectations out of him with her teeth. 

She was looking utterly dumbfounded, staring at him like she’d seen a ghost, like she’d seen an army of ghosts, or maybe the Valhalla they’d gone off to without her. Maybe she’d seen him looking at her mouth. She leaned towards him, and he bent his head down to meet her.

It was nothing, at first—their foreheads bumped and then their lips, briefly, caught one another. She pulled back and wiped her mouth on her hand, shocked, and Thor thought maybe he’d finally crossed a line. Maybe she’d slap him. He would catch her hand if she tried—and then he’d let her go.

But instead she came back for more, came back to his mouth. _Oh no,_ Thor thought as his single eye closed and his heart soared. Her lips were soft. She was already using her teeth. _I want her._

“Stay with me,” he asked her, as soon as she drew back for air.

She took a breath, her chest fluttering. His hands had already mussed her hair.

“Sleep with me,” he asked her next.

Val nodded as she wrapped her arms around his shoulders. She said “ _yes_ ” into his mouth.

 

He carried her to the bed and sat down on it with her. She was hastily unbuckling her armor, shedding it as fast as she could. He raised a hand to help her but she shoved it away, apparently preferring to undress herself. She tugged her undershirt off over her head and was bare from the waist up. Her breasts were small, beautiful additions to the muscles of her chest. He wanted to touch them, wanted to nuzzle his face against them. She noticed his appreciative gaze and looked offended, which worried him.

He turned away and set his own armor aside, so they were both bare-chested.

She raised her hands and grasped her breasts, squeezing them in her fists. He winced a little at the apparent tightness of her grip. “This what you wanted, your majesty?” she asked. “You wanted to see my tits?”

“Val,” he said, taken aback.

“Shut up,” she said. “Take your pants off.” 

The cadence of that, the flatness of her voice—she’d once said ‘ _get your cock up_ ’ to him in just that tone. He’d been getting hard ever since she’d wiped her mouth on her hand after that first kiss—but her tone now sent a wave of arousal through him, rushing hot.

“I’ll help you,” she growled, and tugged his pants down and away from him, discarding them onto the floor.

She was already stroking him with one strong hand when he managed to find his voice. “Val,” he said carefully. “This isn’t Sakaar. You don’t have to do any of this if you don’t want to.”

“I want to,” she said blankly.

“If you’re sure,” he swallowed and tried out a shaky smile. “Then can we go slow? Can we take it easy?”

“I don’t do easy,” Val scoffed, but her hand slowed on his cock. There was a beat. “Unless I’m doing you,” she added.

“Ha,” Thor grinned. “Good,” he said around the flutter of hope in his chest. She hadn’t meant that cruelly, he could tell—that had been right on the edge of affectionate, as far as banter went. “I could, I could try and make it a little harder for you,” he volunteered.

“Harder than this?” she squeezed the base of his cock. “That’d be impressive. I might get a sore throat.” 

She crouched between his legs on the bed, and hovered her open mouth over him. He held his breath, and she looked up at his face before letting just her slack bottom lip graze the head of his cock. She moved lower, letting her lower lip act as a tongue, dragging wetly up his length until she reached the tip. She rested there, her mouth still wide open, and finally ran her tongue over the tip. “How’s that?” she asked. “Is that slow enough for you?”

“Perfect,” Thor told her, his blood pounding in his ears. “Beautiful.”

She worked her way down, sucking him, swallowing him, taking him so deep that he thought she probably hadn’t been kidding about the possibility of a sore throat. It was incredible—she was being careful, and considerate, and was going slow. Her lips were soft and yet so strong—he wanted to pull his cock away so he could kiss her again, kiss her properly, kiss her down into the pillows and then really put his mouth to work—but she was being so deliberate and so focused, he found he couldn’t interrupt.

Then he felt her hand wandering lower, her fingers wet and pressing down—and interrupting her became necessary. He reached between his legs and caught her wrist.

She looked up at him, her eyes hard. “It’s been a week,” she said in blunt surprise. “Are you still hurt?”

Thor shook his head. “It’s not that,” he said. “I had healed before we even left Sakaar.”

She blinked at him, her face darkening a little. “You just don’t want it?” She asked.

“Not yet,” Thor admitted. He was sure he would again, eventually, but couldn’t even consider it for tonight. The thought of even her fingers made his stomach hurt.

She looked away, giving a consolatory squeeze to his cock. “…Are you sure you want any of this?” she asked.

“Yes,” Thor said. “I want you.” He tried to set his hand on her shoulder, but she shied away. That confirmed what he’d been suspecting—she could touch him, but he couldn’t touch her.

“You want my cunt, or just my mouth tonight?” She asked, voice cold. He felt himself begin to soften in her grasp—she noticed it too, and made a half-hearted effort to keep him erect.

“I’d settle for your company,” Thor confessed, stilling her hand and easing it away from his cock.

“Normally I’d offer my ass as well, but I remember how you hated it the last time.” She settled into a cross-legged pose, sitting on the bed. Pants on, shirt off. She rested her elbows on her knees and her breasts hung forward in a way that begged him to touch them, but of course he kept his hands to himself.

“I didn’t hate your ass,” Thor corrected. “I only hated how you were forcing it. Forcing _me_.”

The memory of that chased away the rest of his arousal. His cock rested in the crease between his thigh and his hip, fat and limp. She glanced at it and gave it a pat. “There’s a sad sight,” she muttered. “I didn’t get you off.”

Thor shrugged. “Sometimes it’s not about getting off.”

She searched his face. “What’s it about for us?” she wondered.

He sighed and wrangled a pillow into a comfortable position behind his head. “ _Us_ ,” he repeated thoughtfully, and was tempted to let that be a good enough answer on its own. “…It’s about making peace.”

“I thought you were about to say ‘making love’,” she said in scorn. “And you should know I don’t do that.”

“But you will stay?” Thor hoped aloud. As large as his body was, he fit neatly onto one half of the bed, meaning the other half was free.

She got up, removed her pants, turned off the lights in the room, and came back to the bed. Without a word she climbed into the vacant space beside him, and curled onto her side facing the wall. He made no effort to touch her.

Hours passed, and Thor didn’t sleep. Val was still awake beside him, he was pretty sure. He remembered being told that it would take five hundred years to starve an Asgardian to death. How long would it take for lack of sleep to kill him?

At least if he didn’t sleep, he wouldn’t dream, and he wouldn’t jolt awake to those awful pangs of panic. He could go a few days without sleeping at least.

They stayed like that—side by side, not sleeping—for four or five hours before Val finally rolled over and admitted defeat. “I’m gonna go,” she said apologetically. “I’m sorry I couldn’t… help.”

“It’s fine,” Thor told her kindly. “And I think maybe you did help, a little. Do you still want to tell the people the truth about your life on Sakaar?”

She nodded. “I said I couldn’t turn away anymore.” She sat up and looked out the window at the ever-present stars. “I meant it.”

 

A few hours later, when the ship’s clock registered mid-morning, Thor called a council meeting. They gathered on the bridge, where any passersby might hear what they discussed—Thor didn’t want anyone to think they had anything to plot in secrecy.

As he looked around at the people he’d invited, it seemed to him that he was probably the most fortunate King who’d ever lived. He knew most people—including most people in the room with him at that moment, actually—wouldn’t understand how he could feel that way, puttering through the vastness of space with one overcrowded ship and a thousand grieving refugees as the extent of his kingdom. He knew what they had lost, what he himself had lost—but he also knew what he still had.

He still had Heimdall; the wisest mentor anyone could ask for. He still had his brother, who was less a competitor these days and more of a complement. He had Dr. Bruce Banner, the Strongest Avenger--Bruce was smarter than Loki and maybe even smarter than Jane. How many other kings could say they had the combined talents and abilities of people like Heimdall, Loki, and Bruce (and Hulk!) on their side? What problem couldn’t be solved with the resources of knowledge, wisdom, sorcery, intelligence and, as a last resort, brute strength that just those three of his allies represented?

Thor had other friends and council attendees to be thankful for as well—new friends like Korg the Kronan, who spoke for the surviving gladiators, and of course Val.

She was the last one to show up. Val hadn’t attended any of the meetings earlier in the week and Thor wasn’t sure what she’d been doing on the ship thus far—besides drinking too much and avoiding him, and loathing the people who wanted to see her as a hero. Val was… _lost hurt angry. Violent. Self-destructive. Guilty._

Not hopeless though, Thor told himself. 

Heimdall, Loki, Bruce, Korg and Val were the people Thor was lucky to have beside him. He beamed at them all. “Thanks for being here,” he said to commence the meeting.

“I thought it was mandatory,” Val muttered. Loki narrowed his eyes at her.

“Okay,” Thor said, crossing his arms over his chest. “Here’s the situation. We think we need to tell the people what happened on Sakaar.”

“ _We?_ ” Loki asked, looking pointedly at Val.

“I,” Valkyrie sneered at him. “I need to tell them. I’m the one who did the worst of it.”

“And then what?” Loki demanded. “Punishment?”

“I’m sure she’s punished herself enough already,” Thor said.

“Are we talking about how she used to catch people and sell them as gladiators?” Bruce wondered, poised to intervene as a peacemaker. 

“That’s part of it,” Val acknowledged.

“How would you have handled it back on Asgard?” Bruce asked.

Thor hesitated and looked up at Heimdall.

“That depends,” Loki said. “There was always banishment.”

Thor felt like he could rule that out, at least. “Or imprisonment,” Loki continued, and Thor frowned in dismay.

“Or execution,” Heimdall reminded them all.

“Really?” Bruce looked startled. “You all had capital punishment?”

“Yes,” Heimdall answered simply.

“I thought Asgard was supposed to be, like, really advanced,” Bruce said.

“Really advanced at killing people,” Val muttered. “At least back in the glory days.”

Thor shook his head. “I don’t care how it was in the past, we aren’t going to be executing anyone.”

“Really?” his brother spun to face him. “Not even for treason?”

“Especially not for treason,” Thor declared. “Loyalty can only be earned, not demanded.”

Loki looked impressed. “So it’s only our own fault if we’re betrayed, because we failed to be worthy of the traitor’s loyalty?”

Thor thought that over and nodded. “Exactly. If I’m betrayed, I must have failed the one who betrayed me.”

Heimdall chuckled. “You’re very different from your father,” he remarked.

“Hopefully that’s a good thing,” Thor smiled.

“Is New Asgard going to be a pacifist nation?” Korg wondered.

Thor bit his lip. “No, not exactly,” he said. “I mean, we don’t have an army anymore so I doubt we’ll be waging any wars in the upcoming centuries, at least I hope we won’t—”

“The six of us in this room could win a war if we needed to,” Loki interrupted. “Armies are overrated.”

“I’m not saying there’s never a need for killing,” Thor continued with a sigh. He’d killed thousands of people himself, and honestly believed in his heart that all of those deaths had been morally justifiable. “But… no more sentencing people to death for their crimes.”

“Life in prison then?” Loki wondered. “For the truly intractable offenders?”

Thor didn’t love the idea of dooming people to life in prison, either, but he wasn’t sure what corner Loki was trying to back him into here—surely his brother wasn’t angling for some medieval punishment for Val? “What do you recommend?” Thor asked Loki directly. “If one of our people is guilty of horrible crimes, what should we do with them?”

Loki smirked. “Make them pay for it,” he stated.

Thor gave a little disapproving shake of his head, a mannerism he’d picked up from their mother. “I don’t think you can set a price,” he started.

“You can set a price on anything,” Val spoke up. “A thousand for this, a million for that. Ten million for you,” she said to Thor.

“I wasn’t strictly talking about money,” Loki mentioned.

“It doesn’t matter.” Val was staring Loki down. “Some criminals will wrack up a debt they can’t pay back, even if they work the rest of their lives towards it.”

Korg leaned over towards Bruce. “I’m a little lost, man…are they talking about themselves, or each other? Because they both have, like, a criminal history, isn’t that right?”

Bruce shook his head. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “What I’ve got so far is, Val wants to fess up for enslaving people, and Loki thinks she should have to repay her debt to society or something, and Thor…” Bruce looked up at him. “Oh my god,” Bruce said abruptly. “Thor just wants to forgive her.”

Thor brightened and pointed at Bruce excitedly. “Yes, that’s it!” he exclaimed. “That’s exactly what I want to do.”

“ _Jesus Christ,_ ” Bruce muttered.

“Sorry, what?” Korg asked politely.

Bruce heaved a sigh. “Anyone want to… get into this? I don’t.”

“I can explain,” Thor volunteered. Steve had shared the basic history of his religion with Thor at one point; comparison with Jesus had never bothered him. “He was another sort of god-turned-into-a-human character on Midgard, what, five hundred years before I was born? Went around teaching people to love each other. Said you should even love your enemies.”

“Wasn’t there also a part about forgiving your brother countless times?” Loki added, voice high. Thor met his eyes and Loki smiled at him, lovingly. “…What an idiot.”

“I figured the ‘Savior of Asgard’ might be a fan of the whole Jesus thing,” Thor mentioned lightly. 

“Wait, did you say, love your _enemies?_ ” Val echoed. Her forehead scrunched in disbelief. “What kind of nonsense is that?”

“Yeah,” Bruce’s voice was dark. “And if somebody hits you, let them hit you again...”

“Really?” Val’s expression was exceeding incredulity at this point. “Sounds like a good way to get beaten to death.”

“Yeah,” Bruce repeated. “It is.” Thor remembered a split second too late the fate of Bruce’s mother. Not to mention the whole tortured-to-death part about Jesus himself. It probably wasn’t a perfect philosophy, but Thor did respect the part about loving people. And forgiving them.

“Sounds weird, man,” Korg pronounced. “But certainly not the weirdest—on Miek’s planet they have a religion based on staying still until you die.”

“So… suicide by just lying motionless?” Val asked, blinking rapidly.

“That’s right,” Korg nodded. “It’s like, the ultimate spiritual achievement. Your soul is supposed to turn into a rock or something. When I showed up on Sakaar, took me a decade to convince Miek I wasn’t any kind of deity myself, on account of my skin.”

Val rolled her eyes. “That all sounds ridiculous,” she muttered. “I’m not saying I want to spend the rest of my life in prison, but…”

“You don’t want to be _forgiven?_ ” Loki challenged. Her eyes drifted to Thor, and then she looked away.

“…I don’t know,” she said numbly.

Thor looked up at Heimdall, not sure how to ask for help with all this.

Heimdall gave him a smile. “You’re doing fine,” Heimdall said, in response to Thor’s unasked question. “Perhaps the fallen Valkyrie can atone for her actions on Sakaar by a lifetime of service to the throne.”

Val’s eyes flashed. “A lifetime of service to the fucking throne is what put me on Sakaar in the first place,” she hissed. “As you well know, since you watched the whole damned thing happen.”

“It isn’t Heimdall’s fault,” Thor reminded her.

“I know who’s fucking fault it is,” Val snapped. “I want everyone else to know it too. I’m the one who made their precious prince into a slave. The one who made my own King into a whore.”

“Oh right, the ‘whore’ thing,” Korg mentioned brightly. “Actually I did have a question about that, if we’re talking about it?”

Thor nodded. “Go ahead,” he said to Korg. “What do you want to know?”

“Well it’s been a week, here in space,” Korg began amiably. “And some of the guys from Sakaar, you know we were all used to living with quite a good deal of prostitution, and here on the ship, it’s not available, so some guys were wondering, based on your rank and such, if you were planning on…”

Korg trailed off. Everyone was looking at him expectantly. Bruce seemed totally bemused, and suddenly it struck Thor that Bruce might be the only one at the meeting who _didn’t know_ —he hadn’t talked to Bruce yet about what had happened with Hulk. Hulk had been on the ship the first two nights and had kept company with the gladiators. Bruce had showed up after that and gone right to work helping people. Thor had welcomed him back but hadn’t yet found the right moment to pull him aside and at least inform him…

“…Planning on?” Loki prompted, curious.

“You know, managing the business?” Korg finished a bit lamely. “We know your people are, umm, not really into that sort of thing but, for the people who are looking for it, do you have a plan for how you want to run it?”

“To clarify,” Loki stepped in, as Thor’s brain started to glaze over in mildly-horrified disbelief. “Are you asking my brother how he plans to institutionalize prostitution aboard this vessel?”

“Yeah, that’s it!” Korg nodded.

Bruce was looking around at them all in confusion. “What’s… um… I think I’m missing something.”

“Sex is neither bought nor sold on Asgard,” Loki explained.

“Because prostitution is illegal for you guys?” Bruce guessed.

Loki shook his head. “Prostitution is unnecessary.”

“Asgardians do not buy or sell air for breathing,” Heimdall added.

“Oh,” said Bruce, taken slightly aback. “That’s, uh, that’s an interesting perspective.”

Korg looked back and forth at them all. “So… is that a no, for prostitution on the ship?”

“It’s a no,” Loki informed him.

Korg shrugged. “All right, I’ll spread the word. It’s fine by me, of course, I’m not into that myself, but, I should probably let you know… some of the guys, they might see it as a little hypocritical.” He looked at Thor apologetically. “Since you were the highest ranked whore on Sakaar, at least a couple people were hoping you’d be supportive of the profession.”

“I have to tell him,” Thor muttered to himself, thinking about the necessary conversation with Bruce. Everyone looked at him and he realized he’d spoken aloud. “I have to tell them,” he corrected. “The people. Everyone. I have to tell them what happened to me on Sakaar. All of it.”

“Probably not _all_ of it, Thor,” Loki said hurriedly.

“No more secrets. No more covering things up,” Thor decided.

“Surely there’s room for discretion,” Loki urged. “There are children aboard.”

Thor looked at his brother in desperation. “Can you write it for me?” he asked. “Make Val’s confession part of it. Put all of it in there. And at the end, add something about prostitution. How it… how it isn’t illegal, but how we were raised, how we think it shouldn’t be necessary and how we aren’t going to encourage it. All right?” he gave Loki a pleading look.

For a split-second Loki looked like he might argue against this assignment, but something in Thor’s expression changed his mind. “All right,” he said softly. “I’ll code it so it’s…appropriate. I suppose our former Scrapper will agree to provide her statement?”

“I will,” Val said solemnly.

“And Bruce?” Loki asked. “Will you help with the part about the Hulk?”

Bruce went pale. “What part about the Hulk?”

Loki locked eyes with his brother. _He doesn’t know??_ Loki’s voice demanded in Thor’s head.

Thor gave the tiniest shake of his head.

“The fight,” Loki said immediately, not missing a beat. “The Contest of Champions, Hulk vs. Thor. That’s obviously an important part of the story.”

It was an excellent save, but it was too late: Bruce had a ragged look on his face. “No,” he said. “Wait.” He held up his hands as if to push something away from his chest. “Wait. Thor was a _whore_ on Sakaar?” He looked around the room. “Is the translating thing getting that right?”

“Yes,” said Heimdall evenly.

“Oh my god, Thor—” Bruce looked up at him, and Thor felt his heart aching for the pain and horror in Bruce’s expression. “Against your will?”

Thor was thankful he had Heimdall’s tone of voice to copy. “Yes,” he acknowledged.

“And what part of the story…what the _fuck_ was Loki talking about, when he said there was a part with the Hulk?”

“Bruce,” Thor said softly. “None of it was your fault. None of it was Hulk’s fault even—”

“No.” Bruce’s hands came up to his face, to his hair. “No, no no no. No. No. _Hulk feels guilty_ , oh my god, that’s what this is—I can’t—”

“It’s okay,” Thor said. “You didn’t do--”

“I can feel it,” Bruce said in despair. “Oh, god don’t you get it? I can feel his emotions and I’ve never felt him feel guilty before, I didn’t know it was possible--he feels _guilty,_ and there’s no way it was just a fight—there’s no way he’d feel guilty about a fight!”

“The Hulk didn’t do anything wro—” Thor started to stay, but was cut off by the slam of both of Bruce’s fists onto the table.

“ _NO!_ ” Bruce yelled, his voice halfway to Hulk’s. “ _Don’t fucking lie to me,_ ” he growled. Thor had never seen him this angry when he was human. “ _Thor._ Did Hulk hurt you?”

Thor kept his voice as calm as he could. Loki and Val, he noticed, had both moved back, ready. “…He didn’t want to,” Thor said.

“Did he _rape_ you?”

“No.” Thor moved towards Bruce and reached for his shoulder.

“ _Please_ don’t touch me,” Bruce cried out, hunching away from him. Thor drew his hand back, his heart falling. Touch was the best thing Thor could offer, usually, when any of his friends were suffering, Thor could gather them up in a hug, hold them tight against his chest. He wanted to do that for Bruce now, and for himself, and felt Bruce’s rejection like a physical pain.

“I’m sorry, Bruce, I should have told you much sooner,” Thor said. “I’m sorry that it happened and I’m sorry you had to find out this way. He didn’t want to hurt me. Hulk is still my friend.”

“He fucked you,” Bruce muttered through his palms, his hands covering his face. Then his inflection changed. “ _You fucked him,_ ” Bruce said to himself. “You held him down and you fucked him because you could, you sick animal, you fucking _monster_. You knew it was wrong and you did it anyway, didn’t you? You’re sorry? Are you fucking sorry? _You’ll be fucking sorry when I’m done with you._ ”

“We have to help him,” Thor said, looking around the room. “Loki, is there anything??”

Loki looked absolutely terrified, but he moved so quick he may as well have teleported. He dropped his hand onto the top of Bruce’s head, hissed in pain and collapsed, unconscious, on top of Bruce—who was also now thankfully unconscious.

Thor, Val, Heimdall and Korg stared at one another across the room.

“...Your staff meetings suck,” Val said to Thor after a beat.


	11. Say the word

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“…How is this supposed to work between us?” Val asked, with the slightest quaver in her voice._
> 
> _“I don’t know,” Thor admitted. “But I do want it to work.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, Thor and Val have both been around for a while, right? Long enough to have experienced All The Sex, and to know what they like. I am convinced that Val likes it a little rough. So hold onto your panties, girls... things are gettin' _wet_. ;)

Chapter 11: Say the word

Thor stopped by the infirmary several times that day, and the healers assured him that Bruce and Loki were both going to be fine. Bruce needed to rest, to distance himself from the violence in his mind. Loki, on the other hand, appeared to be staying unconscious by choice. Thor figured his brother had his own reasons for whatever he was doing, and left him to it.

Later that night, alone and unable to sleep, Thor wished that Val would stop by his room again. His gaze kept returning to the Dragonfang she’d left behind, unsheathed, on the table. Even if she just wanted to resume their sparring match, that would beat laying awake and waiting for the nightmares to start. As the hours passed and she didn’t appear, Thor finally decided to go and look for her. He sheathed her sword and brought it with him.

When the door to her cabin opened an empty bottle rolled into the hall.

“What?” she asked groggily from the darkness inside the room.

“Can I come in?” Thor asked.

“You’re the King, you can do whatever you want,” she grumbled.

Thor continued to stand in the hall, peering into the room. “Are you trying to sleep?” he wondered. “I don’t want to disturb you.”

“The whole ship is trying to sleep, and failing at it,” she reminded him. He wasn’t sure what to say to that, and thought maybe he ought to leave her alone. “Ugh, just come in,” she told him, as he was about to apologize and go.

He stepped in and closed the door. Val turned on the lamp beside her cot, sitting up bleary-eyed and swinging her legs down to the floor. She’d gone to bed almost fully clothed; her armor was off but her undershirt and pants were on. Her boots were off too—the sight of her bare feet, oddly enough, made his heart beat a little faster.

“I was hoping you’d come back to my room tonight,” Thor said in complete honesty, and she shot him a scathing glare.

“When you ordered me to sleep with you I didn’t think you meant every night for the rest of our lives,” she muttered.

Thor blinked. “I never ordered you,” he said. “I asked.”

She shrugged. “Asked, ordered. It’s all the same when you’re the King.”

Thor’s grip tightened a little on the Dragonfang. “It isn’t the same, and you know it,” he said. “I never ordered you and I would never order anyone, and you know that too.”

“You’re going to have to order people to do stuff sometimes,” she said with an overly dramatic roll of her eyes. “You can’t be afraid of telling people what you need them to do for you. There was a time when your father commanded every—”

“Stop, Val. I’m not my father.”

She looked away. “Order me to sleep with you tonight,” she challenged.

He shook his head no.

“…How is this supposed to work between us?” she asked, with the slightest quaver in her voice.

“I don’t know,” Thor admitted. “But I do want it to work.”

There was a beat, and she bit her lip.

“You left your sword,” Thor said awkwardly, holding it out with both hands.

“It’s your sword now,” she told him with a shrug.

Thor turned it over in his palms. “I have to earn it first, remember?”

“That would mean defeating me in combat,” she informed him. “Which you failed to do last night.”

“I failed to do a lot of things last night,” Thor said lightly. “But maybe I could try again?”

“Hmm,” she considered. “You’re already holding it in your hand. You may as well have it if you want it, claim it as your own. No one would stop you, least of all me.”

He met her eyes, feeling that they might not be talking about just the sword at this point. “…I’d rather earn it,” he said to her softly.

Her eyes were hard. “That might be difficult. I don’t think you’re anywhere near as talented as you think you are. You’d have to hone your skills if you want to have any chance against me.”

“I supposed I could work on that,” Thor mentioned. He looked her over; her shoulders seemed tense. Suddenly he wanted to put his hands on them, wanted to brush her hair out of the way so he could kiss the back of her neck and then on down between her shoulder blades. “Would you…” his heart jumped towards his throat. “Would you teach me?” he asked.

The silence roared in his ears.

“…As a more experienced warrior,” she acknowledged at last. “It might be my duty to give my young King a few lessons.”

“I am willing to learn,” Thor smiled at her. “But it isn’t your ‘duty’ to give me anything.”

The side of her mouth twitched. “I’ll give you whatever I want to give you.” Her tone was low and full of intent, and it went straight through his core, straight through his bones. “Whatever’s mine to give, I’ll give it to you and you’ll take it. You’ll fucking take it all.”

They stared at each other. Thor held up the Dragonfang, and cracked it from its sheath just the slightest bit, so it made only a sliver of a note of metal-on-metal, a suggestion of imminent combat released into the air. “…Should we start now?”

“I’m too drunk to fight you tonight,” she said. “Let’s skip to the fucking.”

Some of the heat Thor had been feeling suddenly evaporated. He clicked the sword back into its sheath and lowered it to his side. “You’re too drunk?” he wondered aloud.

“You know what I mean,” she said dismissively. “Just fuck me already.”

“Not if you’re _drunk_ ,” he protested.

“Gods, you know how to piss me off,” she muttered. “I’ve been drunk or worse since the moment we met, why pick now to fret about it? I still know what I’m doing. This is who I am.”

He narrowed his eyes. “I can wait until you’re sober.”

“Hah,” she laughed once, rudely. “That’ll be a long wait, your majesty. I’d say you’d be waiting ‘til Ragnarok, but, seems we’re past all that now.”

“I’m not past decency,” Thor informed her.

“Aren’t you?” she challenged. “Are you sure about that? Because _I am_ , Thor. I am so far past _decency_ I don’t think you’ll ever catch up.”

His heart sank a little; like with Bruce earlier, he sensed he was seeing something raw in her now, something ragged and unhealed. He wanted to wrap his arms around her, just wanted her to hold on to him, wanted her to know that he was real and safe and not going anywhere—wanted to feel that from her, too. As much as he wanted that comfort he knew she wouldn’t accept it. Val saying _just fuck me_ was exactly the same as Bruce saying _don’t touch me._

Thor set the sheathed Dragonfang on the table. “I’ll go,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry I bothered you.”

“Just like that?” she challenged flatly. “You’ll _go_ , without getting what you came for?”

He hesitated. It didn’t sting the way she probably meant it to, the accusation that he was there for sex. Of course he’d sought her out with the hope that she might want to sleep with him; of course he wanted that, and she knew it. But it was far more than a physical need, and the physical act itself wasn’t the important part. He wasn’t sure how to make her understand. It hurt because she wanted to drag him down to the level where it was just fucking. It hurt because she was willing to drag him down, but not willing to let him lift her up, so that it could be about comfort or anything else.

“Val, when you were with me last night,” Thor began to wonder aloud. “And you said you wanted to, what did you mean?”

She looked at him like he was the stupidest person she’d ever seen. He was used to that look from her by now; it was her automatic defense. “I meant I wanted us to fuck,” she told him. “Same as I’m wanting now.”

“But why?” Thor asked, shaking his head. It struck him that he’d never had to ask that question before; normally if people wanted to sleep with him their reasons were obvious. 

Her expression darkened. “Why _not_?” she countered. “You wanted it too. You ordered, or you offered, I don’t care which it was—you wanted to use me and I wanted to be used. I like a good hard fuck as much as anybody, or maybe a bit more than your average slag, and it’s not like I minded your dick in my mouth, it was something to do and not think about, for fuck’s sake. And you made it clear you weren’t going to give me what I wanted any other way—” she caught herself and pressed her lips together.

Thor remembered the disk, the way she’d fallen to her knees and braced for the shock. “You wanted me to punish you,” he said in horror, as that dark thought dawned on him. “You wanted to sleep with me to punish yourself?”

Her mouth fell open but no words came out. She looked up at him and he saw in her eyes that she wasn’t going to deny it. He felt an instant weight of guilt heavy as a rainstorm, and remembered how clearly he’d felt that it hadn’t been the right time to kiss her as he’d done, to ask her to stay. He’d known she wasn’t in her right mind, and he’d gone ahead anyway, letting stress and desire and emotion get the better of him. He wasn’t going to give up on her, but he also wasn’t going to repeat his mistake of last night.

“…I’m sorry,” was all he could think to say, and he retreated to the door and then into the hall even as she sighed and got to her feet.

“Thor, wait,” she called. He ignored her, not even waiting for the door to close as he headed off down the corridor, not really sure of where he was going, just sure that he needed to go. “Hey, wait,” Val said again, appearing in the hall behind him. In three or four quick steps she caught up to him and grabbed his wrist, immediately recoiling from the snap of static electricity as she touched him. “Ouch,” she said, startled.

Thor turned to face her. “I didn’t mean to,” he said right away. “The air in here—that was an accident.”

“I know,” she assured him. “It’s fine.”

For a breathless moment he stared at her, barefoot in the hallway, the bluish lights overhead making her skin seem dull and unhealthy. She looked weary, haunted, her eyes too heavy for her beautiful face. She needed sunlight, Thor thought. Yellow sun and a clear sky unmottled by perforations, free from holes torn into it from countless worlds. He imagined cupping her face in his hands and kissing her right there.

“I just…” her eyes searched his face, lingering on his lips, and maybe she was imagining the same thing. “Come back in and let’s talk,” she said at last, voice low.

He followed her back into her room, feeling sheepish for bolting, storming out of there like a boy who hadn’t gotten his way in some game. He felt off-balance, like maybe this was wrong, and resolved to leave for real if she tried to coerce him into anything he didn’t want to do. He wasn’t interested in holding anyone down and fucking them in anger; the fact that it even occurred to him that she might try to get that out of him made him ache with unhappiness. She closed the door and locked it. 

“Listen to me,” she said, leaning back against the door. Her voice had no hostility in it, only exhaustion. She looked him over knowingly, sagely, and Thor was reminded that the Valkyries had fallen and her heart had been broken before his had even started beating.

“Sleeping with you wasn’t a punishment,” Val assured him. “I wanted the disk because I thought if you hated me or hurt me or took your revenge somehow I might feel relieved. But if I want to do what you want me to do, if I want to serve you or be of use to you, that’s not a punishment for me. It’s something I choose to do. If I give you my sword, or teach you how to use it, or if I share your bed—all of that will be my choice, something I choose to do because I want to do it. Got it?”

Thor swallowed, wanting to understand her. “So last night, you wanted…” he began cautiously.

She sighed and rolled her eyes. “Your dick, your majesty. I wanted your cock, all right? Is that so difficult to imagine?”

Thor crossed his arms over his chest, squinting at her. “There’s plenty of cocks on this ship, I’m sure you could’ve had your pick of them.”

She looked mildly offended. “And you’re the King; if anyone could have their pick it’s you—you could just go find whichever Asgardian suits your fancy—or Sakaarian for that matter. Not a single person aboard this ship would decline, you know that, right? I bet even Heimdall would fuck you if you asked.”

Thor laughed dismissively at that, and the sound seemed to spur her on.

“I’m serious, more than half the refugees aboard are eligible maidens by the look of them, just go pick out whichever is the prettiest—”

“Maybe I did,” Thor interrupted her warmly, because he _did_ think she was beautiful. Constantly.

She blinked and tilted her head at him, slightly miffed. “Cute, your majesty. Cute. Flirting with the Scrapper who sold you into slavery.”

“And who helped me save our people from Hela,” Thor pointed out. 

She gave him a fond shake of her head. “You’re impossible. I know I shouldn’t—I know you only think you want me because you’re fucked up in the head from what happened on Sakaar and I should probably toss myself out the nearest airlock and be done with it, but I want…” she stopped herself and swallowed, her brow furrowing. “I want to help you,” she said at last. “Asgard, what little is left of it, finally has a decent King, all right? After how ever many thousands of years, it’s… Look I know that killing myself won’t help you, won’t help anyone. So I’ll stay alive, and tell the people the truth, and, if you want,” she looked him up and down, settling her gaze on his face.

“If you want me,” she said after a pause. “Then I want you to have me.”

Thor still had his arms crossed over his chest; now he scrunched up his nose, making a little whining sound of uncertainty. “ _Nhn_ … I don’t know, Val. I’m glad you wouldn’t consider it a punishment but sleeping with me to ‘serve’ me or ‘be of use’ to me seems almost as wrong. I feel like I need to convince you that this is not just because I’m ‘fucked up in the head’.”

Her fond gaze settled into an unnerving stare. “But it is though,” she said flatly. “Don’t you think I know what you’re really after?”

“…No?” Thor hazarded. What he was ‘really after’ was probably just some cuddling at this point, and he wanted to tell her that, but didn’t think she’d take it well.

“Then I’ll prove it to you,” she said, and stepped towards him.

His eyebrows went up and he slid back a step. “Val,” he said, his mind starting to go blank.

“Get on the bed,” she said to him.

Heat rushed straight to his cock. “This isn’t Sakaar,” he managed to say.

“But it’s _because_ of Sakaar,” she insisted, voice and expression dead.

He found himself sitting on the bed almost before realizing what he was doing, and welcomed her onto his lap as she straddled him, her arms draping over his shoulders. He put his hands on her hips automatically, helped her as she rocked forward, rubbing herself against him. “See?” she said, glancing down at the impressive rise in his pants. “Topaz was right about me.”

Thor looked at her in confusion, his brain struggling to keep up with what was happening even though he knew it was straightforward. He couldn’t deny his arousal and this didn’t feel wrong. It was a little sudden, but he was more than ready for it—he had wanted this last night, and he wanted it now. Was he missing something? “What do you mean?” he asked.

She gave him a cold look and then put her hands on the sides of his face, drawing him in to kiss him. Her mouth was wet and sour from booze. He kissed her back, licking at her tongue, until she finally pulled away.

She kept her hands on his face. “I trained you,” she said, matter-of-fact.

It was a struggle, but he pulled his wits together. He smiled, refusing to let her ruin this. “You didn’t train me to kiss you,” he pointed out, and leaned towards her lips, but she held him at bay.

“I had power over you,” she stated. “You told me yourself it was the first time you were forced. The first time you were a victim.”

Thor shook his head, brow furrowed. “That doesn’t sound like the right word,” he tried to say.

“It is the right word,” she assured him, running her thumb over his bottom lip. “You were powerless and had to cope with it. It does something to your head, trust me. And so now you’ve fixated on me because you’re chasing the rush of it.”

“Val, this isn’t,” Thor had something important to tell her, but her thumb scraped across his teeth as he tried to talk. He pulled his head back, even as his cock jumped at the thought of her thumb in his mouth.

“I don’t blame you for needing this,” Val said lowly. “I probably should have expected it, honestly.”

He understood what she was saying and it broke his heart. He ran his hands up her sides, gently, and then wrapped her up in a hug, pulling her in until she let go of his face and settled her arms over his shoulders. She let her weight sink fully onto him, and he could feel the shape of her sex even through their clothes, the dip between her legs nestling him perfectly snug. He wanted her—but he also wanted her to want _him_ , and not see this as a favor, or a transaction, or worse, a recreation of what had happened on Sakaar.

So he hugged her, just holding her against his chest, and he realized after a minute that they were pressed together so tight he could feel her pulse against his cock. She must have noticed the same thing, because she suddenly sat up, shifting back. He let her go.

“What are you doing?” she demanded.

“Hugging you,” Thor answered.

She narrowed her eyes, and he leaned forward, carefully gathering her into a hug again, holding her tight for a long moment.

“…Is this the part where I cry on your shoulder?” she asked wryly at last.

“Ha,” said Thor. “Be my guest. Though I was thinking I might cry on yours instead.”

“Don’t you fucking dare,” she grumbled, but he thought she didn’t mean it. She gave his shoulders a squeeze, which caused him a flicker of hope. He gradually shifted her closer, back to where they matched up so nicely, hugging her as if he planned to never let go.

“You were wrong,” Thor murmured to her after a while. “ _This_ is what I was really after.”

“Someone to sit on your cock?” she scoffed, clenching against him a little, and the fact that she could squeeze him like that through their clothes made him throb.

“Nope,” he said warmly, rubbing her back. “Someone to hold.”

She tensed in his arms at that. “So,” she said, recovering. “That’s your thing? Hold someone tight while you’re stiff as a battering ram, that does the trick for you?”

Thor chuckled against her neck, rubbing his beard against her collarbone. “You’re trying to make this anything but what it is,” he said, knowing he could out-stubborn her in this particular contest of wills. She wanted this to be something harsh, something coarse. His goal was to make it the opposite.

“This isn’t a romance,” she complained.

“Mmm,” he kissed the corner of her jaw. “Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m fucking sure; you’re the King and I’m the worst criminal in your entire kingdom. You can sleep with whomever you like, including me, but you can’t possibly—”

_Love you?_ Thor finished her thought, silently, feeling her chest heaving, both of their hearts beating faster.

“You can’t _cling_ to me,” she finished at last, lamely.

“Why not?” he wondered idly, relaxing his body against hers, even as his pulse quickened. He loved this closeness, being chest-to-chest with her, feeling her solid and warm and strong as he leaned on her, as he rested against her.

“Because,” she said quietly. “I’m not worthy of it.”

“Not worthy of a hug?” Thor asked, hugging her even tighter. “That’s a pitiable state.”

“I don’t want your fucking pity,” she grumbled, and began to squirm a little in his lap. He loosened his hold so she could pull away if she wanted, letting her know he wasn’t going to keep her trapped in his arms. 

She slid her hand down between their stomachs and pressed her palm flat on his cock, over his pants. “And this is more than a hug and you know it. You’re hard as an iron club; it’s starting to freak me out that you don’t want to get off.”

Thor frowned. “I never said I didn’t want to get off. But holding you close seems more important.”

She rolled her eyes. “You could do both,” she suggested.

He nodded slowly. “…I could do both,” he admitted, and she stared at him in a pointed challenge.

“Well?” she demanded after a moment. “Get on with it.”

He reasoned he didn’t have any particular reason to refuse, so he slid his hands down her back, cupped her ass and pulled her forward across his cock, creating incredible friction for both of them as their clothes got in the way.

“Mm,” she hummed in his ear as he rowed her hips, forward and back, churning her against him. She began to cooperate, until he was fairly sure she was keeping up the rhythm all on her own, his hands on her ass just along for the ride. “Oh my god,” she muttered as he tensed his legs under hers, getting close. “ _Are you serious_?”

He was serious. He clutched her tight, squeezing her ass through the fabric of her pants, his breath catching in his throat as he buried his face in her neck and--

“In your _pants_ , your majesty?” She was shaking her head side-to-side, disapproving, but then she was also petting the back of his neck. He smiled, slumping against her, his arms already moving back up to hug her better. There was something affectionate in her tone there that he recognized, and he thought again how she could have been—how she now would be—one of his friends. In a brief flash of wistfulness he imagined all the fun they could have together, in bed and just in life, together. He could love her, he was certain. 

“Thought you wanted me to come,” he mumbled into her hair.

“Not like a rutting adolescent,” she criticized. “Under your desk during your history lesson.”

“History, eh?” a low laugh rumbled in his chest. “Always a stimulating subject.”

“Always a pack of lies, if you didn’t even know about Hela,” Val mentioned.

“A fair point,” Thor granted with a sigh. “Though at least some of the legends we learned about turned out to be true.”

She stiffened again. “I’m not one of them,” she warned him. “I told you—”

_You are to me_ , he thought to himself, but he knew better than to say so aloud. So he just held her close. “I know,” he said.

She shifted in his lap. “…You’re still hugging me,” she noted.

“Observant of you,” Thor teased lightly.

“Is this a contest of who can sit around the longest with a puddle in their underwear?” she asked, eyebrows high.

“Aha,” Thor grinned at her. “So you admit I’m not the only one enduring that particular condition at the moment.” 

“You’re the only one who’s gotten any satisfaction out of this, I’ll admit that much,” she grumbled.

“Oh,” Thor blinked, taken aback. “If you’d like me to fix that, just say the word.”

“What word did you have in mind?” she taunted. “I already told you to fuck me, and that didn’t work.”

“Then try telling me to do something else,” Thor recommended.

She stilled, considering.

“Kiss me,” she decided, looking at his mouth.

That sounded good to Thor, so he leaned forward to obey. “…Wait,” she said as his lips were millimeters from hers. He paused, moving back far enough to focus on her face. “Take off that patch,” she said, staring at it. “No hiding.”

“No hiding,” he agreed, and carefully pried the patch away. The truth was ugly; but he could accept that she deserved to see it.

“Pick me up,” she said next, and he put his hands around her waist and lifted her, standing up with her. She wrapped her legs around him, holding herself up as she kissed her way across his face, kissed the slash through his eyebrow above his missing eye, kissed his jaw and worked her way underneath his chin, her teeth scraping through his beard. “Put me on the table,” she huffed.

By the time Thor lowered her back onto the surface of the table she was pulling her shirt off over her head, and was then bare from the waist up. Thor remembered his own armor then and set to work unbuckling it, throwing it aside. She was reaching for him and he went down into her embrace, his hands cradling her head, his elbows on the table and their mouths joining, separating, then joining again. Her body was dwarfed by his, but her thighs clamped around his hips and her arms encircled his chest, and she was holding him in place on top of her, anchoring him.

He’d barely had time to get soft, and now she slid her crotch back and forth against him from this new position, trying to fuck him through both her pants and his all over again. He grit his teeth at how much friction there was, how much pressure. Hot and rough, almost uncomfortable, his cock hardening with every upwards shove of her hips.

“Lick me out,” she said, running her tongue along the inside of his bottom lip.

“You’ve still got your pants on,” Thor reminded her. 

“Tear them off me.”

He frowned a little. The idea of tearing anything didn’t quite appeal. “You’re not going to make this easy on me, are you?” he muttered.

She rolled her eyes and settled back to let him peel her pants off her legs as slowly as he wanted, leaving kisses down the front of her thighs as he went. “…That’s better,” he said happily, tossing her now-balled-up pants and underwear across the room.

“I won’t break,” she told him in a low voice. “You can be strong with me.”

“I know,” he said. “But I’d rather not.” He picked up the room’s only chair, parked it at the end of the table and sat down.

“You utter bastard,” she said in what he hoped was only mock disgust. “You’re going to sit in a chair!?”

“Mm-hm,” Thor nodded at her, already sliding his palms under her ass. He picked her up by the hips and dragged her ass down to the edge of the table.

“Go on,” she instructed, and he dipped his head to her sex and licked his tongue as deep into her as it could go. “ _Oh god,_ ” she groaned to the ceiling, and Thor smiled against the open edges of her cunt, licking up inside that perfect first inch of her. She’d had her hands braced against the table, out to her sides, but as he went in and out again with his tongue she suddenly reached for the top of his head. He looked up at her in concern as she grabbed him by the hair—her eyes looked a little dangerous. “Can I do this?” she asked, moving his head a little, maneuvering him with her grip on his hair. “Can I push your head around?”

“Yes,” Thor said in surprise. That was a slightly unusual request; most women he’d slept with had been more than happy to let him do this all by himself—but he found he didn’t mind the help.

Actually—as she moved his head how she wanted it, as she held his face in place with both of her hands and fucked herself up against his mouth—he loved it. When she relaxed her hold he took the initiative again and licked a stripe from her asshole all the way up to her clit, pausing there to suck her for a moment, drawing as much of her delicate skin into his mouth as he could.

She sat up with a gasp, her thighs clenching around his ears.

Slowly he let go of her clit, dragging his bristly chin down between her folds until he could sink his tongue back down into the middle of her, licking in and out, deliciously slow.

“I’m going to sit on your face,” she told him abruptly.

“On the bed?” Thor suggested, looking up. She nodded and he scooped her up off the table, hoisting her up in front of him so her legs stayed wrapped around his neck. Her hands grabbed onto his head again, and his face stayed buried in her crotch as he carried her to her cot. She laughed as he sat down at the end of the cot and then let himself fall backwards, bringing her with him so she was already in position on top of his face when they landed.

He looked up from between her thighs and smiled. “That sounded good,” he told her warmly.

“What?”

“You laughed,” he told her. “It sounded like you were enjoying yourself.”

“I thought I was enjoying _you_ ,” she taunted, and nestled her cunt against his ready mouth. She rocked back and forth, riding his face. He felt like he might be drowning in her, and of course he loved it—it was an old joke, but if he died like this, what a way to go. Suddenly she pulled away, but only to turn around and throw her leg over his face again, reseating herself facing the length of his body. “I’m going to suck you off,” she informed him, taking it for granted that he’d be able to come again, so soon after the last time. She was still rubbing herself down onto his mouth. “Keep your tongue in my cunt and I’ll keep your dick in my throat. Make me come if you can.”

“Mm,” Thor liked the sound of that, and kissed her clit to tell her so. She was unfastening his pants, just enough to draw his cock out of them. She worked him with her mouth and her hands, making Thor gasp against her cunt as she swallowed him whole. “Not fair,” he gulped as her hands threatened to make shorter work of him than even the heat of her mouth. “Can I use my hands too?”

She popped her mouth off his cock. “Only if you can make me gush,” she said.

“You like doing that?” he asked conversationally, between eager licks.

“Yeah,” she said. “It’s one of my favorite things.”

“All right,” Thor agreed. “I’ll make it happen.”

“Ha,” she scoffed, and rubbed her clit down against his chin. “You sure you know how?”

“Of course.” Thor wasn’t worried at all about whether or not she believed him—he would prove it to her.

“I’ll fucking drench you,” she threatened. “I’ll come all over your face.”

“Please do,” Thor said through a broad smile. “That’s one of my favorite things too.”

He shifted her forward, trading his tongue for his fingers, and sat down onto his hand appreciatively. “ _Mmm_...Those go a bit further than your tongue, don’t they?” she huffed.

Thor chuckled and raised his head enough to nibble the roundest part of her ass as he curled his fingers inside her. She tried to return her attention to his cock but his fingers distracted her—he could tell she was already feeling the pressure. She moved her hips aggressively, driving his fingers further.

“You’re gonna have to do that harder,” she instructed at last. “Can you be rougher?”

Thor had already made it clear that he preferred to be gentle, but he knew that what she wanted required a certain amount of roughness. There was no other way to trigger that loss of control. “I can,” he told her. “If it’s what you want.”

“I want it,” she growled. “I fucking want it.”

The angle was a little unusual but Thor knew he could manage it. He went faster, his motions more abrupt, back-and-forth inside her cunt, as rough as he dared to be. She began to whine, breathing between clenched teeth, and he felt her control start to break down—she was close, he was getting her close. She quivered and went silent on an intake of breath and Thor heard and felt that unmistakable wetness, the rapid-fire smack of water splashing between her cunt and his still-pumping hand. He kept going, fucking her through it, and finally she cried out, nearly screaming, coming violently all over him exactly as she’d promised. She clenched around his fingers and gushed and gushed. It was glorious.

“Aah,” he sighed, relaxing under her. “There you go.”

“Fuck,” she swore, regaining her senses. “You got me.”

“I got you,” Thor acknowledged, pleased.

“You’re fucking soaked,” she said breathlessly.

He shrugged. He was the God of Thunder; he didn’t mind getting wet.

“Can you do that to me with your cock?” she wondered.

“If you like,” Thor offered.

“Oh, I would like,” she assured him. “But not right now, because—” she leaned forward and caught his cock in her mouth again, sucking. “Right now, I want to do this.”

Thor leaned back, settling his shoulders and the back of his head against the thin mattress. He closed his eye and just _felt_ her lips sliding up and down, felt the incredible heat of her mouth, the firm texture of her throat around him. “Almost,” he muttered after a few minutes. “Almost…”

He tightened his core, sitting up a little. “Can you turn around?” he asked desperately. “As much as I love the view from here...”

She made a scoffing noise around his cock but obliged him anyway, keeping him grounded out in the back of her throat as she cleverly moved her body so she was between his legs instead of hovering over his torso. Now he could see her dark eyes, see her mouth absolutely stuffed with his cock, her lips stretched in a wide, nearly perfect circle around him. She was wildly beautiful, taking him like this, owning him with her mouth. He sat up a little further, reaching for the side of her face, his palm sliding along her cheekbone and his fingers finding their way into her hair. She nuzzled her cheek into his hand as she continued to suck him up and down.

“Make me come, Val,” Thor whispered to her. She nodded and worked faster, one hand squeezing his balls. She’d already taken him astonishingly far down her throat, and now she did that again, lowering her face as close to his groin as anyone had ever gotten. He bucked up to meet her and she whined in approval, tightening her grip on him. “ _Oh._ ” Thor let himself go over that edge, felt the hot release surging out of him. “ _Ah,_ ” he gasped again, softly. “Oh, Val.”

She drew back halfway, swallowing, drinking him down. Her eyes were closed in concentration, her lashes dark against her cheeks. When he was finally done she eased him out even further, kissing the tip of his cock as it left her lips. Thor could barely move. She’d gotten every last drop of seed out of him, he was sure—and now he really was spent. Weakly he motioned for her to come up to his chest, and she lay down beside him, leaning over to kiss him.

“Can you taste yourself on my tongue, your majesty?” she murmured at him. Thor nodded, and she kissed him again. “I liked that,” she breathed as their mouths parted. “I liked feeling you spurt down my throat. But the whole time I was thinking how I’ll like it even more when you’re all the way inside my cunt, pouring into me like that. And I might even like it best of all when you finally ease me open far enough to put yourself up my ass, and come inside me there.” 

Thor shivered a little, his cock twitching even as it softened. He reached over with one hand and smoothed Val’s hair. “Next time,” he whispered, and felt a miraculous wave of sleep rising to meet his consciousness.

_Finally,_ he thought in relief, and went under.


	12. The prince (what a fucking fairytale)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thor and Val keep doing their thing, Bruce is depressed, and Loki lets cats out of bags.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Psst... this fic is still kind of dark. Val and Thor are still not on the same page. Thor wants cuddling and comfort and Val is not ready for that--this kind of conflict is my guilty pleasure; I find it delicious. But if dysfunctional relationships make you anxious, if you can't stand the thought of a character going along with the very thing they'd prefer to be running away from, well, here's your warning: there's soft sex and burgeoning (and unrequited) romantic feelings ahead. 
> 
> Also I'm loving this story so much, it will now be 14 chapters total.   
> This chapter picks up with the morning after the end of the last chapter...

Chapter 12: The prince (what a fucking fairytale)

_Bleep ding. Bleep ding._

“Ugh,” grunted Val beside him, sitting up on the edge of the cot. “What.”

Thor realized he had been dreamlessly asleep, and hadn’t felt that flash of terror in waking this time. Either the pleasant little chiming noise he’d just heard had circumvented it, or, maybe (more likely), having Val there had eased the transition. He reached out and rubbed her back.

She stood up, sighing, and marched over to the door, completely naked. She wrenched it open a couple of inches. “What?” she repeated flatly.

“My lady,” uttered a startled voice from the hall, Asgardian from the sound of it, and unprepared to encounter the Valkyrie in the nude.

“I’m not your lady,” Val practically growled. “What do you want?”

“…His majesty wanted to be informed when his Midgardian friend awoke.”

Val’s shoulders tensed like she might leap through the door and strangle the kid right there. Thor sat up and laughed, not the least bit ashamed to have been found in her room. “Thank you,” he called out. “I’ll visit him soon.”

Val shifted in the doorway as if to block the messenger’s attempt to see around her. “Was there anything else?” she demanded.

“No m’lady,” the messenger started to say, but Val slammed the door on the first syllable. She spun to glare daggers at Thor.

“You’ve got a lot to learn,” she muttered.

Thor shrugged. “I’m sure I do, but you’re the one who said I can sleep with whomever I like.”

“ _Whomever you like_ is your business, and not that kid’s or anyone else’s right to know about,” Val replied. “Besides, if you want to be the least bit respectable you shouldn’t be sleeping with the sort of person who answers the door naked.”

He laughed again. “I might answer the door naked myself,” he said lightly.

“You might, but a King shouldn’t,” Val insisted. “Especially not right now. The people are still grieving—they might not appreciate knowing that their King is busy getting his cock fondled.”

Thor sighed and rested his head back against the wall. “All right,” he conceded. “I won’t lie to anyone about sleeping with you but I also won’t rub anyone’s face in it.”

She rolled her eyes. “I just know there’s a joke in there somewhere about rubbing things in faces…”

“Or rubbing faces in things?” Thor added.

She tossed her chin over her shoulder towards the room’s tiny bathroom. “You want to take a shower?” she asked, raising an eyebrow at him.

“Probably, we ought to, to save water,” Thor began, treading carefully in case that hadn’t been the sort of invitation he’d wanted it to be.

Val shook her head. “It all gets recycled; you could leave all the showers on all day every day and not deplete the supply.”

“Oh, good,” Thor said brightly. “In that case, no need to rush, so we should definitely take our time. We should shower thoroughly. Possibly two, three times in a row, even.”

“You’re half a disgrace,” she snorted in mock disgust. 

Thor smiled at her openly, glad that she wasn’t really angry with him. “That means I’m also half _not_ a disgrace,” he pointed out.

“Yuck,” Val scoffed. “And _that_ means you’re an incurable optimist.”

“Correct,” Thor confirmed, unabashed.

“What am I going to do with you?” Val wondered fondly.

Thor sat up and leaned forward, stretching his back. “You’ll just have to help me clean up my act,” he supposed. “…With, you know, soap. Scrubbing.”

She rolled her eyes so violently her head rocked back. “Gods, you can stop already. I’ll give you a _scrubbing,_ all right?”

“Yes, please,” Thor said happily. He stood up and the one rumpled sheet fell away from his legs. “Oh, hello,” he said, glancing down in feigned surprise at his already-quite-firm cock. “Where’d you come from?”

“Ugh,” Val groaned, but Thor could hear the amusement stifled in her tone. She strode forward and gripped his erection. “Let’s go, your majesty,” she muttered. “This way.” She pulled him into the shower by the cock, turning the water on as she crowded him against the wall.

For a brief moment he forgot everything else—forgot Ragnarok, forgot Sakaar, forgot the ship and the people and being the King—his whole world was the soothing heat of the water on his shoulders and the strength of her hand squeezing him perfectly tight. She started to go down on her knees but he stopped her, pulling her up with his hand wrapped around the back of her head. “…Can I tell you something?” he asked breathlessly, meeting her dark eyes.

She instantly looked suspicious, but gave him a cautious nod, slowing her hand on him.

“My whole life, ever since I was old enough, obviously,” Thor began, knowing he was rambling a bit. “I’ve always had my pick of bedmates. If you think being the King means you can have your choice, try being the _prince_ —there may have been an actual line at the door, now and then, when I wanted it.”

“I’m not sure if you’re trying to impress me or gross me out,” she complained, scowling. “And no matter how much action you think you’ve had, I promise you I’ve had more.”

Thor shook his head. “That’s not the point. What I wanted to say is that, all those people, well, the vast majority of them, over the centuries… most of them wanted me, a certain way.”

“Let me guess, on your back with your legs spread, biting your pillow?”

Thor laughed. “More like the opposite. _They_ expected to be the ones lying back, letting me have my way with them. Which I did, of course, with no complaints from anyone.”

“I bet,” she scoffed, still jacking him nice and slow.

“But every once in a rare while, I’d find someone who was a little more…ferocious.”

She cocked an eyebrow at him. “ _Ferocious?_ ” she repeated, incredulous.

“Someone who wasn’t afraid to take the lead,” Thor clarified. “Whenever I encountered a person like that, it was special for me.”

Her eyes narrowed. “You liked to be bossed around?” 

“It was a rare treat.” he smiled down at her.

She nodded slowly, processing that. “So you… jumping when I say jump, that wasn’t just wired into you on Sakaar?”

“Hah, not even close,” Thor assured her. “And I don’t want what happened on Sakaar to ruin something I’ve always enjoyed, all right? Especially now that we both know it’s something I can enjoy with _you_.”

A frown passed over her face, and her hand dragged to a halt. “It still shouldn’t be me,” she muttered, but her expression cleared and looked up at him before he could respond. “But since you are a stubborn ox, and I’m currently gripping your dick, I suppose I can cooperate.”

“Mmm,” Thor hummed, leaning into her grasp in the hopes that she’d resume stroking him. “That’s generous of you.”

“And I admit I am curious,” she went on, pulling him close so his cock slid up against her stomach. “About what all those lazy partners of yours liked you to do to them.”

His eyebrows climbed. “May I… show you?” he wondered hopefully, and she nodded in assent. “Oh good,” Thor said, and picked her up. She wrapped her legs automatically around his waist, one of her hands already seeking to help his cock into place.

“Ah-ah,” Thor shook his head. “Let me do it,” he said mildly. “Just be lazy, like you said.”

“I’ll try,” she grumbled.

He smiled and pressed her back against the wall of the shower, the pleasantly hot water spraying evenly onto both of them. With his hands under her ass and her ankles crossed behind him, he slid his cock up between her folds and then up to her clit, brushing right over it. She bit her lip and strained forward, seeking to trap him into the penetration that she wanted, but he slipped right up to her clit again, making sure to rub her there with the underside of his cock, up and down.

“Teasing me,” she complained through clenched teeth.

“Not for long,” Thor muttered apologetically. He moved her hips up, positioning her cunt against the head of his cock, and just barely adjusted her so she was poised on the tip. She squirmed helplessly in an attempt to get him inside her.

“Drop me, you bastard, just drop me on it,” she hissed.

“Nope,” Thor kissed her cheek and eased her down onto the head of his cock, sighing. She was so hot, so slick. So much better here than even her amazing mouth. He felt her tighten around him as if to push him back out, so he went, raising her up enough to separate them.

“What the fuck are you doing?!” she demanded, her hands clenching into fists over his shoulders. “You’re supposed to push in when I squeeze like that, not pull out!”

“Sorry,” Thor smirked, not really sorry at all. “Guess I’ll try again?” He lowered her down, and she gasped when his cock hit her dead center, the head sliding in. She clamped down on him for all she was worth and he knew she wanted him to keep going, to push in against that pressure. Instead he stilled, and scrunched up his face. “…Can you relax a bit?” he wondered when she opened her eyes to question why he’d stopped.

Her eyes went wide, and her cunt throbbed around him, and he almost thought she’d come just from that. But then she gathered her wits and swallowed, adjusted her grip on his shoulders again, and tried to go slack.

Thor waited for her to be as soft around him as she could be, and then eased her down, gradually, stopping each time he felt her try to resist.

“How can anyone tolerate this?!” she seethed. “This is the most infuriating fucking nonsense.” she struggled to bounce herself up and down on his hands, on the few inches of his cock that she could reach, but he just laughed and held her up, making sure she wouldn’t get access to a single inch more of him than he was ready to give her. “Horrible,” she deemed. “You know I could do this to you, too, right? Hold you up against a wall, tease you with it, take revenge for this total bullshit…”

Thor pictured their positions reversed, her tiny frame supporting him, bracing his back against a wall with his big legs wrapped around her. The thought sent so much heat to his cock he saw sparks at the edge of his vision. Imagining her penetrating him like that caused him no dread, only excitement— “So long as you promise to go just this slow,” he murmured, lowering her down a little bit more.

“I promise,” she swore, holding eye contact with him. “I fucking promise, I will take my sweet time with you, I will take _hours,_ I will take all day and night if that’s what you need, just stop driving me crazy, stop making me wait for it—”

Thor gave her a conspiratorial little nod, as if to say, _now?_ And she gasped and clenched tight in anticipation that he would finally drive his cock home, but then of course he just held her still, waiting for her to relax.

“Oh, you bastard, I fucking hate this,” she grumbled as he brought her down on his cock ever-so-gradually, moving only while she kept herself loose.

“You hate it?” He gave her his best kicked-puppy, which he knew to be one of his most effective expressions. “I thought you wanted to let me have my way with you.”

She rolled her eyes. “I thought ‘your way’ might be lightning bolts up the ass or something,” she grumbled.

Thor laughed. “That sounds uncomfortable,” he remarked. “And, dangerous, in a shower…”

“You know what I mean. I didn’t think you’d want to stand around for ages until I got bored enough for your cock to just _glide in_ with no trouble.”

“ _Mmm._ ” He wasn’t sure how to inform her that ‘gliding in with no trouble’ was exactly what he wanted. “…Are you really bored?” he pouted.

Her eyes ran down his body to the point where he was only halfway inside her, and the sight of how little progress he’d made seemed to infuriate her, causing her to wriggle against his grasp. “I’m…aggravated,” she said at last. “You’re going too slow.”

He sighed. “It’d probably be better on a bed, honestly.”

She immediately groped one hand along the wall until she found the spigot for the shower, and turned off the water. “Then let’s do this on the bed,” she said flatly. “And shower later.”

Thor thought about it for half a second. “Okay,” he agreed, and then carefully sank her the rest of the way onto his cock, adoring the way her mouth went slack and her eyelids fluttered as at last he pressed deep inside, stretching her where she had no way to control him.

“Gods, that is thick,” she mumbled, and hugged his shoulders as he carried her across the room. He lowered her onto the cot and settled on top of her, pinning her hips to the mattress with his own.

She made a disappointed noise in her throat as he rocked back, because she must have assumed he’d slide all the way out—but he paused at the last second, deciding that maybe making her wait any longer would be unfair. So he slid back in, and then back and forth, gently.

Val began to hum in pleasure, her hands running over his sides, and he was relieved to note that she no longer seemed annoyed. “Good?” he asked hopefully.

“Yeah,” she said with a happy snort. She patted his back. “You’re good. And it’s just, this, over and over, until you come?”

“Until we both come,” Thor amended. “That all right?”

“Sure, go for it,” she said, eyebrows high.

It was so comfortable, so familiar, covering her with his body, cradling the back of her head with one hand, letting his hips do the easiest work possible. It had been over a year since he’d made love with anyone this way; though he caught himself remembering that Val wouldn’t call it that. She might at least call it _intimacy,_ he hoped—they were face-to-face and not in a hurry, soft and… loving. It wasn’t ‘fucking’ anymore, at least not for him. Maybe for him it never could be only that, with her.

Thor focused on her face, and how good it felt to be inside her. He had meant it when he’d said it was generous of her, to allow this, to try letting it be so gentle and easy when clearly it wasn’t her preference. He appreciated her giving him this chance, and was determined to show her how much it meant to him that she’d trust him with her pleasure instead of achieving it for herself. He knew he could bring her off with him, if she’d let him, if she’d only _relax…_

He worked on getting her close, thumbing her clit in gentle circles. He murmured encouragements when she started to clench her muscles around him, this time pressing through that sweet resistance as she’d wanted him to do earlier. “ _Come on,_ ” she urged him at last. “ _Come on._ ”

Thor was a little surprised that she was ready so soon—but at the first unmistakable tremble of her climax he tucked his hips and went with her, his mind going blissfully blank, white-hot as lightning.

“Oh, _fuck,_ fuck,” she swore. “I can feel you coming,” she hissed, and suddenly she was thrashing her hips up under his, crying out as she sent herself into shuddering after-shocks, surprising Thor with their intensity. He whimpered against her neck as she seized around him, her abs quivering under his.

“…I could feel you coming too,” Thor told her as soon as he could speak again.

“Hah,” she panted weakly, patting his back again. “No kidding.” She let him stay there for a few more minutes, stroking his side, their heartbeats slowing together. He felt sated and sleepy, even though they’d just woken up, and wondered how long it would be before they could just stay in bed all day together. Someday, he hoped…

“So that was ‘your way’, was it?” Val mused.

“Mm-hm,” Thor kissed her shoulder. “Was it all right?”

She laughed, which tensed her body around his cock all over again. “It was ridiculous,” she exclaimed, but her tone was fond, and Thor knew it wasn’t really a complaint. “I’ve seen your brother tongue-fuck a cocktail glass more aggressively than that.”

“Ew, why--” Thor shook his head. “There’s a mental image I could’ve done without.”

She shrugged. “Seemed like you might approve of talking about our traumatic experiences.”

“Let’s move that one to the bottom of the list, and hopefully forget about it entirely before it comes up again,” Thor recommended.

“Speaking of forgetting things…” she said lowly, and trailed off.

“What?” Thor asked.

“Never mind,” she sighed, and her petting turned into a short little ‘clap clap’ on his flank. “Get up. Get this huge thing out of me. Don’t think I can’t tell you’re still stupidly hard in there.”

“Aw,” Thor chuckled as he carefully pulled away from her, rolling onto his back. He gave his cock a sympathetic squeeze with his hand. “It’s not _that_ bad.”

“You ‘never had any complaints’, right?” she said, turning onto her side and propping her head up on her elbow.

“None that I recall,” Thor reported cheerfully.

She narrowed her eyes. “Wait. You know that’s because you were the prince, right?”

“The prince, and selfish and vain and quick to anger,” Thor admitted.

Val frowned at him thoughtfully. “You were that much of a brat, but you were a lamb in bed? How’d that happen?”

“I never lost my temper in bed, thankfully,” Thor recalled. “That was the one place where everyone sought to please me, where I could always get my way, and I guess that’s how I discovered that I prefer to give pleasure rather than to take it.”

She rolled her eyes again, looking abjectly up at the ceiling. “Prefer to give pleasure? Gods. You really would have been great as a whore,” she muttered, and then looked stricken. “Sorry—”

Thor wasn’t bothered. “Well, I was the highest-ranked whore on at least one planet, for a short while,” he mentioned, smiling.

She gave him a blank look. “…You know your brother rigged that, right?”

He blinked at her. “…Oh,” he said, taken aback. Of course Loki had rigged that—it had gotten him nicer quarters and better treatment at the Playhouse, had made it impossible for the Grandmaster to accuse him of not upholding his end of the deal, and, no doubt, Loki had gotten his fair share of amusement out of Thor being awarded that particular title. “…Remind me to give him some kind of ‘Brother of the Year’ award later—no wait—‘Sibling of the Year’, _second place,_ after Hela.”

Val laughed, that sound he was loving more each time he heard it. “All right, your majesty,” she said, sitting up. “You ready for that scrubbing?”

He was. He followed her back into the shower, where there was plenty of soap but no washcloths or sponges, leaving them to make do with just their hands. As the heels of her palms rubbed soapy circles around his shoulder blades and down his spine, Thor couldn’t have concealed his happiness even if he’d tried. Her hands, and just her presence beside him, all felt so wonderful.

Without a doubt, this had started out to be one of the better days of his life.

 

An hour or so later, after cleaning up the mess they’d made of Val’s cabin and stopping by the cafeteria for a meager breakfast, Thor and Val went to the infirmary to visit Bruce.

The infirmary was deserted except for Loki, still unconscious on a bed across the room, and Bruce, who was sitting up in a bed near the door.

If Thor was having one the best days, he could tell immediately that Bruce Banner was having one of the worst. Bruce looked almost as bad as he had after Johannesburg, hollow and worn, disconnected, somewhere between nauseous and in shock. He barely acknowledged them as they approached.

Still, Thor was glad to see his friend awake and not in a rage. “Bruce,” Thor said, and repressed the urge to lay a hand on Bruce’s shoulder. “Um, how are you?”

“Fine, great,” Bruce mumbled, not looking at him.

Val shot Thor a murderous look, and then sat carefully on the edge of Bruce’s bed. Wordlessly she put her hand palm-up on the covers next to Bruce’s. Bruce glanced at it, swallowed, and then slowly put his hand on top of hers.

“I’m sorry,” Thor blurted. “I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you sooner.”

Bruce shrugged. “When were you supposed to tell me?” he wondered dully. “In the Quinjet? In those alleys? In Val’s apartment, or on the Commodore, or while Asgard was on fire, or during that ceremony on the bridge—that would’ve been a perfect time to tell me, right?”

“…Probably…not?” Thor guessed cautiously.

Bruce shook his head. “You think? Yeah. Guess there isn’t really an ideal moment to mention to someone that, oh by the way, they held you down and fucked you bloody.”

Thor scrunched up his face, taking a deep breath in. “I think we should talk about it.”

“Sure, fine. Whatever you want.” Bruce still wasn’t looking at him. “Can’t wait to hear how it ‘wasn’t so bad’ and how it ‘wasn’t my fault’, right? I’d give it ten sentences before you’re trying to convince me you actually liked it.”

“Hm.” Thor crossed his arms over his chest, studying Bruce in concern. He’d seen Bruce in a dark mood like this once or twice back on Earth, but had scarcely interacted with him during those moments. He wasn’t sure how to proceed, how to make things not-worse. “…How much do you actually remember?”

Bruce shrugged again. “Hulk showed me, he, remembers there was blood. And he knew what he was doing was wrong. That’s all I need to know.”

“It was the Grandmaster who wanted Hulk to do it,” Thor told him. “And he was an Elder of the Universe, which means, he was going to make it happen. I think you need to know that nothing Hulk could have done—”

“Yeah, nothing,” Bruce scoffed. “Nothing the Hulk could’ve done? He’s the strongest there is; he could’ve smashed the Grandmaster into paste.”

“Can a dog tear out its master’s throat?” Val asked quietly.

“What?” Bruce’s face furrowed in confusion.

“A dog,” Val repeated. “It’s strong enough to tear out its master’s throat. But it doesn’t.”

“You’re saying Hulk was the Grandmaster’s dog?” Bruce asked.

Val nodded. “As was I. And I watched the video,” she looked up at Thor. “Of you and Hulk.”

“There’s a video?!” Thor exclaimed in dismay.

She nodded. “…I think half the planet saw it. And you were right about one thing—Hulk didn’t rape you.” She looked back down at Bruce. “Hulk didn’t rape him, Bruce. But I did.”

Bruce looked startled, a flash in his dark eyes half surprised and half dangerous. “ _What?_ ”

“Everything that happened to Thor on Sakaar was my fault,” Val explained, staring through the wall behind Bruce’s head. “And what I did to him was much worse than what happened with the Hulk.”

“But I hurt him,” Bruce insisted to her, and then locked eyes with Thor. “I _hurt you_ ,” he said desperately.

Thor’s chest felt compressed by an invisible vise, and he wasn’t sure what to say. There was so much pain in Bruce’s expression, and such a distressing vacancy in Val’s eyes now, Thor felt like they’d both jumped into a chasm together and were about to drag him with them. He opened his mouth to protest, not knowing where to begin, when he was saved by a gold-black shimmer in the air.

“Gods, this is a bleak conversation,” Loki snipped at them, appearing on the other side of Bruce’s bed.

“Loki, good, you’re awake,” Thor said in relief.

Loki cleared his throat and adjusted his collar. “Not quite,” he said apologetically. He gestured vaguely at the other occupied bed. “I’m technically still asleep, right over there.”

Thor squinted at him in suspicion. “What’s wrong with your voice? You sound hoarse.”

“It’s nothing,” Loki said placidly. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Whoa,” Bruce spoke up, staring hard at Loki. “Hulk, uh, Hulk thinks you’re a ghost.”

Loki narrowed his eyes at Bruce. “Hulk and I need to have a chat,” Loki muttered. “But not right now. Ghost or not, I could hardly stand by and leave you all… wallowing. Thor,” he straightened and addressed his brother. “Do you remember that time I set you on fire?”

“Uh, yep, kind of hard to forget,” Thor replied.

“Was that painful? You screamed a lot,” Loki recalled.

“Pain for days,” Thor groaned. “But you were sorry.”

“Yes, I was.” Loki smiled with the sides of his eyes. “And, do you remember that ‘accident’ with the boulder and the cliff on Alfheim?”

“I remember four broken ribs and a broken leg,” Thor exclaimed. “Let me guess; not really an accident?”

“Quite on purpose,” Loki admitted. “And I was sorry for that too, though I never told you.”

Thor folded his arms across his chest again. “You’re being ‘sorry’ an awful lot these days. It’s starting to make me nervous.”

“Is there a point to this ramble down memory lane?” Val asked Loki, annoyed.

“Yes.” Loki stared coolly down at her, his hands clasped behind his back. “You think what happened to Thor on Sakaar was your fault. But I would argue that it was actually my fault; that all of it was my fault. I made choices years ago that sealed all of our fates, and even though what both of you did to Thor—well, Bruce, you aren’t remotely culpable—”

“No, shut up,” Bruce said with a surge of anger. “Let me stop you right there, all of you—I’m sick of hearing how what Hulk does ‘isn’t my fault’, all right? Hulk’s my problem, he’s part of me. I have to live with the consequences of whatever he does. I have to deal with the fallout, got it? So you can’t tell me not to feel responsible.”

“…Very well,” Loki conceded. “You may feel responsible. The point I wanted to make is that even though what Val and Hulk did to Thor was reprehensible, just look at him.”

All three of them turned to regard Thor.

“He doesn’t hate you for it,” Loki explained. “Believe me, it isn’t possible to make Thor hate you by hurting him. He doesn’t know how to hold a grudge. You hurt him, he learns from it and he heals. That’s his way. You just have to accept it.”

Bruce looked away, ashamed. “…Thor may not be able to hold a grudge, but I sure can,” he muttered.

“Me too,” Val said, giving Bruce’s hand a squeeze.

Thor gave them both a pained expression, and turned to Loki for help.

Loki shook his head. “Listen to me,” he said to Bruce and Val. “If you hate yourselves for what you did, that will hurt Thor far worse than anything else you could possibly do to him. He would rather have you unrepentant than hating yourselves.”

“That’s right,” Thor confirmed brightly. “It’s all in the past. I don’t want either of you to dwell on it. I’ll be miserable if either of you are, um,”

“Tortured by guilt,” Loki supplied.

“Exactly,” Thor nodded enthusiastically. “Especially since I hardly have to worry about you going and hurting anyone else, there’s really no point for either of you to feel, excessively, um,”

“Despairing of any hope of making amends,” Loki provided, and Thor started to worry a little bit about the way his brother was looking at him.

“…Right,” Thor said, brow creasing. “Please don’t feel tortured, or guilty, or despairing. I love you all too much to see you suffer like that.” He tilted his head to look at Loki, and was puzzled to note that Loki definitely seemed to know something the rest of them did not.

“Hah,” Bruce shook his head. “It’s not that easy, Thor. I can’t just dismiss my emotions, can’t make these feelings cease to exist just because you don’t want me to feel them. And Hulk—if Hulk feels guilty, Thor, I am gonna suffer for that, there’s no way around it.”

“Speaking of Hulk, I’d like to talk to him too,” Thor said.

Bruce’s voice went cold. “Yeah, no. Not gonna happen.”

“Why not?” Thor wondered.

“Let’s just say Hulk’s unavailable,” Bruce looked away again, his jaw clenching. “Either I’ve got him backed into a corner or he’s hiding there because he knows what’s good for him. He’s still talking to me but he’s not coming out for a while. Would be fine by me if he stayed shut in there for good.”

Thor and Val exchanged a concerned glance.

“Hence the reason we’re going to have that chat,” Loki commented.

Bruce pointed at Loki. “You stay the fuck out of my head,” he warned, raising his voice.

“Sorry,” said Loki, a little too calm.

“There you go again,” Thor muttered. He felt like he might be developing a twitch in his missing eye. “You’re _sorry_ …”

“I am,” Loki told him, and then looked back at the version of himself that was asleep on the bed. “And I’m sorry I have to wake up now. Time for me to go be a ghost elsewhere.”

“Hmm,” Thor squinted at the projection of his brother, unconvinced but also very slightly unnerved. “…Say hello to Mother for me,” he requested, only halfway joking.

Loki gave him an unreadable look which definitely ended in a smile. “I will,” he said, and disappeared.

“Dramatic little shit,” Val grumbled, just in time for the probably-flesh-and-blood Loki to hear her.

Loki sat up on his bed, sighing. “…Why do I get the feeling you’re talking about me?”

Val’s head whipped around to glare at him. “Probably because you think everyone ought to be talking about you all the time. And also, you _are_ a dramatic little shit.”

“Fair point,” Loki acknowledged. “What’d I miss?”

“Hulk’s hiding, Bruce doesn’t want to let him out, I’m responsible for what happened to Thor on Sakaar, Bruce feels guilt for what Hulk did and you are the President of the We-Have-Hurt-Thor club,” Val recapped.

“Ah,” Loki didn’t seem the least bit surprised. He turned to his brother, eyebrows flinching. “…And how are you?”

“Better,” Thor reported cheerfully, since it was true. “Glad you’re with us.”

“Thanks,” Loki said, and then a frown crossed his face. “Wait…” he looked back and forth between Thor and Val, and then rolled his eyes. “When I said I didn’t have a magical solution to your problem, I see you went and found one on your own.”

Val gave Thor a pointed look. “What is he talking about?” she demanded.

Thor shrugged. “I’ve no idea.”

“Please,” Loki scoffed. “It’s obvious. He fell in love and thereby solved his problem.”

“What ‘problem’ was that?” Val stared hard at Thor.

“…Specifically, trouble sleeping, and, flashes of panic when I woke up,” Thor admitted.

“But love conquers fear,” Loki said in mock soliloquy. “Not to mention, it alters your brain.”

“Uh, that’s not magic,” Bruce interjected. “It’s chemistry. You fall in love, your brain’s flooded with dopamine, oxytocin…”

“There’s also a tiny bit of magic.” Loki corrected apologetically. “At least, there is when it’s Thor.”

“What a fucking fairytale,” Val muttered.

Thor shrugged, unoffended. “I have saved at least ten princesses from dragons over the years. And three princes.”

Loki scowled at his brother’s smirk. “One of those was me, and you know damn well that doesn’t count.”

“You _were_ quite reluctant to share my horse as we rode off into the sunset now that I recall,” Thor said teasingly.

“That’s because I’d intended to ride out of there on an actual _dragon_. Two more days and I would have had it tamed. But no, someone had to barge in all hammers and lightning bolts, ruining a perfectly good plan.”

“He was trussed up on a roasting spit when we found him,” Thor reminisced blithely. “Apple in his mouth and everything.”

“You two are a hoot,” Bruce deadpanned.

“Anyway it was a long time ago,” Thor said magnanimously, and then caught sight of Val’s face. “Umm… Val? You all right?”

“Fine,” Val said, voice like steel. “Happy to be of fucking service.”

Loki’s eyes went wide. “You two are going to have to work that out,” he advised his brother.

“Okay…” Thor wasn’t exactly sure what the problem was, but he felt confident that someone would explain it to him later. At the moment he was just content to have Loki awake and… un-ghostly. “Before we get to that, though,” he returned his attention to Bruce. “Is there anything we can do to make Bruce feel better?”

Bruce shook his head. “Thanks, but, no. I get that you don’t want me to feel bad, but I _do_ feel bad, and unlike some people I don’t have the power to just magically rewire my brain.”

Thor cast a hopeful glance around the infirmary. “What about medicine? Can’t the healers do anything for you?”

“Sure, they can put me under or make me high as a kite,” Bruce grumbled. “Which would you like?”

“Maybe something in the middle?” Thor wondered.

“That’s what you’re looking at,” Bruce said bluntly. “I know, it sucks, but this is as mentally stable as your Asgardian medicine can make me. We’re traveling in a superluminal spacecraft with non-rotational artificial gravity and there’s something in the wall over there that I swear is a replicator and yet we still don’t have a pill that cures depression. Just my luck I guess.”

“If I may suggest,” Loki began gently, smiling as they all turned to look at him. “The Valkyrie is still going to be writing her confession, correct? Any feelings of guilt that Bruce can put into words could be added to the missive.”

Thor wasn’t sure if he liked the sound of that, but Bruce spoke up before Thor could protest.

“Yeah, I’ll do that,” Bruce agreed. “Write it all down. Think through it. It could help.”

Val was giving Bruce a significant look, still holding his hand. “We’ll work on it,” she said. “The two of us.”

“Actually, the three of us,” Loki spoke up. “Assuming I’m still tasked with compiling the final product?”

Thor nodded. Of course Loki was still the right person for that job, as far as Thor was concerned.

“Good,” said Loki neatly. “When would you like it done?”

“Soon as possible, don’t you think?” Thor answered.

“Today,” Val said firmly. “We’ll do it today. Rumors are already spreading.”

“And, if there really was a video,” Bruce mentioned glumly. “How much you want to bet there’s a system on this ship with a copy of it?”

“The video…” Thor was struck by a sudden idea. “Bruce, you could watch it.”

Bruce looked as if Thor had just punched him in the face. “Thanks, I’ll pass,” he said.

“If you did though, you would see what I was talking about—that Hulk didn’t want to—and that it was the Grandmaster manipulating everything.”

Darkness trembled behind Bruce’s eyes. “Thor,” he said gravely. “What makes you think I want to see Hulk being coerced into fucking you?”

“Oh, no,” Thor swallowed, realizing he’d gone and made it worse after all. “Bruce—I spoke without thinking. Of course you wouldn’t want to see that. I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Bruce muttered, looking away. “I know you’re only trying to help.”

“Maybe if his majesty would go ‘try to help’ somewhere else, Bruce and I could get to work?” Val suggested icily.

Thor took the hint. “Of course,” he said, already backing towards the door. “I’ll go. I’m sorry, again.”

Loki sighed and stood up. “Wait, Thor,” he said. “I’ll come with you.” He followed his brother into the hall, and Thor found himself needing to put a hand on Loki’s shoulder as they went, just to make sure. 

“...Still here,” Loki muttered, sensing what Thor was seeking to verify. 

“For now,” Thor said simply. Loki paused for just the tiniest fraction of a second, and glanced back to make sure Bruce and Val couldn’t hear them. 

“All right,” Loki said, slumping a little. “Let’s talk.”


	13. Good for the soul

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Val tells the truth about who she was on Sakaar.

Chapter 13: Good for the soul

Loki led the way to a deserted observation deck. It was one of the least-cluttered areas aboard, and most of the lights were off, creating a somber mood. Thor supposed this would be a nice place for meditation— maybe they should tell people about this room if anyone needed a space for prayer or just to be alone with their thoughts.

“Let me guess,” Thor said as Loki stopped by the windows, pretending to watch the strange constellations scrolling past. “You figured out the nightmares?”

Loki nodded.

“And they’re not about Ragnarok,” Thor guessed next. Loki shook his head no. “…They’re about some horrible disaster still looming ahead of us?”

Another nod.

“A disaster that will somehow be your fault?” Thor asked, as non-accusatorily as possible.

Loki’s jaw twitched and a crease appeared between his brows, sharp as the slice of a knife. “How did you know?” he asked when he found his voice.

“You pretty much told me yourself,” Thor explained. “Right before you woke up back there, some projection of you appeared and told us you made choices years ago that ‘sealed our fates’ and so forth. It was all very grim.”

“You’re sure it was me?” Loki blinked, taken aback.

“Fairly sure, yes. Do you want to tell me what’s going on?”

Loki glanced down at his boots, and then out at the stars. “I still can’t see the future,” he said, and then tilted his head to study his brother. “But you can, at least a little. You’ve the power to be a seer, though you don’t know how to use it yet.”

That sounded absurd to Thor, and also like an even greater responsibility than he was already facing. “Yeah, right. I’ve never even been able to foresee what was for supper,” he exclaimed lightly.

Loki wheeled on him, hands gesturing. “Then why have you been adventuring through the realms for the past few years looking for infinity stones? Because the Norns granted you a vision—and I don’t mean that delightful golem you Frankensteined with the mind stone.”

“Frankensteined?” Thor grinned. “So you’ve seen that movie too?”

Loki did his best impression of an owl in the company of a sparrow. “I’ve read the book,” he stated, and then seemed to recover from his need to exude superiority. “Anyway the reason you’ve been looking for infinity stones is because someone _worse_ has been looking for them too—and has started to find them. A few days ago the Mad Titan destroyed Xandar and obtained the first stone. In borrowing those dreams of yours I’ve seen enough to know that he’s coming for us next. For me, specifically. It’s unavoidable. He’s going to catch me. And when he does, I want you to know that what I did, what I’m specifically not telling you about right now, was never meant to betray you. I’m a traitor to _him,_ not to you. And everything I do from now on is intended to thwart him.”

“…Are you leaving?” Thor asked, hoping his suspicion was wrong.

“I thought about it,” Loki admitted. “The Commodore is very fast; I could outrun him for weeks. The problem is that I know he’d still overtake this ship and hold you all hostage in order to lure me back.”

“What does this ‘Mad Titan’ want from you?” Thor wondered, and Loki seemed to focus on something very far away.

“Power,” Loki answered. “He was the one who captured me when I… let go. I convinced his minions, or maybe _they_ convinced _me,_ that I could conquer Midgard.”

Thor carefully put those pieces together. The scepter, the Tesseract, the Chitauri. His brother, driven mad and manipulated, by someone Thor had never heard of. He felt a rush of anger. “Well, that’s in the past now,” he assured his brother. “Whoever this ‘Mad Titan’ thinks he is, he’d be wise to stay well clear of us.”

“He just destroyed an entire planet,” Loki warned.

“So did we.” Thor put his foot down through his tone, and saw Loki recalibrate, backtracking from whatever point he’d been poised to make. “If he shows up, we’ll deal with him.”

“ _When_ he shows up,” Loki said gravely.

“We’ll deal with him,” Thor repeated, discarding the aggression in his voice this time. “Together, all right?”

Loki gave him a smile so fake he knew Loki meant him to mistrust it.

“How long do we have?” Thor asked, as the thought sunk in that this really might be it—the scenes from his nightmares, the flames—how could they possibly endure more destruction?

“I don’t know,” Loki sighed. “Xandar is months away.”

Thor took a breath. “So is Earth,” he pointed out. “We could make it.”

Loki held his brother’s gaze for a pained moment, and then gave the slightest shake of his head. He didn’t think they would make it.

“Well, we’re at least going to try,” Thor said stubbornly. “Until you or Heimdall or someone else figures out a better plan, we’re just going to keep going. We still have a ship to run and people to care about. I’m not going to sit around cowering just because our bad dreams might come true.”

“Of course,” Loki sounded a little relieved. “I just wanted you to know.”

“Thank you for telling me,” Thor said solemnly. “And for whatever you’re _not_ telling me…” Thor cast around in his heart, trying to make sense of everything Loki had said earlier, before he’d woken up. _Tortured by guilt. Despairing of making amends._ If those descriptions applied to Loki now… “Um, no matter what it is, I know that you’re sorry, and, no matter what happens, I’ll still love you.”

A dozen Mjolnirs couldn’t have made Loki seem any more pinned down. When a moment passed and he still hadn’t said anything, Thor started to worry.

“I wish I had made other choices," Loki responded at last. "Which reminds me...” his eyes slid over his shoulder, back towards the infirmary. “I have to edit someone’s confession. And write my own.”

Loki disappeared as dramatically as ever, leaving Thor alone with his thoughts, conveniently in the place he’d noted might serve well for introspection.

He wandered closer to the windows, surveying the strange stars. Every minute carried them lightyears closer either to safety or danger, and despite what his brother had said Thor felt no ability to discern what awaited them. He mulled it over a little longer, wondering—and then decided not to worry about it. Whether or not the ‘Mad Titan’ appeared was not in his control. Instead he would focus on his friends, on Bruce and Val, and whatever he might be able to do to help them. He had a bad feeling that the conversation in the infirmary had not gone well, and his friends deserved better from him.

Thor could only hope the thing they were writing would be of some help. 

 

News of the project underway in the infirmary spread fast, and by midday people were asking Thor what time the recitation would be. They were pleasant, curious inquiries. Whatever rumors had circulated from the Sakaarians so far, it was enough to make everyone interested in hearing the real story. Besides, this was their eighth day aboard; enough of a routine had been established for people to be ready for a distraction. They were hungry for new information, anything to occupy their minds between rationed meals and the ubiquitous struggle for sleep.

Thor hoped they weren’t expecting one of Loki’s melodramatic theatrical productions; this wasn’t intended to be entertainment. So he answered solemnly when he told them that no time had been scheduled, doing his best to convey that the event should be treated like something between a respectful funeral for a criminal and a reading of an estranged relative’s will. Not that he had any intention of dissuading people from attending—and at this point, even a reading of an estranged relative’s hoarded stash of receipts would probably be well-attended.

In the late afternoon Thor returned to the infirmary to check on their progress. Three dark-haired heads looked up in unison as he cleared his throat at the door, which made him smile. Val had her hand on Bruce’s back, which made him smile more—he was relieved to see the two of them sharing some physical affection. If they understood one another in a way that Thor could not, he was more than grateful that they had each other for support. 

“Do you need something?” Loki asked briskly, closing the cover on a book that they’d all been hunched over.

Thor took careful stock of Bruce and Val’s expressions; they both seemed calm and clear-headed. And they both met his gaze without flinching away, which was encouraging. “…How’s it going?” he asked carefully, not wanting to pester them for info.

Loki picked up the book and held it in front of him like a serving tray. The cover was black and had a number printed on it in bold white: 142. “This is Val’s portion,” Loki explained. “It’s still a rough draft but it will serve its purpose.”

“I didn’t know that you’d be making an actual book out of it,” Thor remarked.

“This way it’s documented,” Val spoke up. “Once and for all, there’s an official record. And, there’s a spell on it so only truth can go into it, and so anyone who reads it will know it isn’t a fantasy or an exaggeration.”

“Only the truth, yes.” Loki looked a little sheepish. “…I rarely use that one, but they persuaded me.”

“There’s another spell on it too,” Bruce added. “Tell him about the one for the kids,” he said to Loki.

Loki brightened. “I’m proud of this one. It’s enchanted so that if the story will harm the reader, they won’t be able to open the book.”

“So children will be prevented from reading it?” Thor asked.

“That’s the intent. If it would hurt them, damage them psychologically in any way to read it, then the book will stay sealed. There were books with similar enchantments in the libraries on Asgard.”

“Uh-hm. And how did you thwart those enchantments back then, brother?”

Loki suppressed a smile. “I made friends with a child who couldn’t read, convinced them to open the books for me, and then read over their shoulder. But don’t worry, I’ve improved this spell so it focuses on the reader, not the one touching the book.”

Thor was impressed. “Leave it to a lockpicker to improve a lock,” he said warmly, and then looked hopefully at Val. “…Do you mind if I take a look?”

She shook her head. “That’s what it’s there for,” Val said quietly. “So you and everyone else will finally know.”

Loki passed the book to his brother and Thor turned it over in his hands. “One four two,” he read aloud the number on the cover. But then he tried to open it, and the cover was stuck shut. His brow furrowed. “Um, Loki? I think your spell is broken.”

“Damn,” Loki uttered, turning faintly pink. He took the book back, opened and closed it. Passed it to Bruce, who also opened it and thumbed the pages, and then looked up at Thor.

“…Or it works a little too well,” Bruce suggested mildly, passing it to Val.

Val opened the book, and Thor tried to look over her shoulder—and saw only blank pages.

“Hm.” Thor cleared his throat again. “Funny that a story that’s at least partially about me thinks I shouldn’t be allowed to read it.”

“I’ll make some adjustments,” Loki muttered, embarrassed.

Val sighed and handed the book back to Loki. “We’re doing the reading-aloud part tomorrow,” she stated.

“I should warn you that practically the whole ship is planning to attend,” Thor said quickly.

“Good,” said Val. “Because what I have to say, I only want to say it once.”

 

Thor left them to their work, but stopped by again later that evening to see if anyone wanted supper. His brother shooed him away, claiming they still weren’t done.

Reluctant to eat alone, Thor thought he might eat dinner with Heimdall on the bridge, but the stoic guardian claimed not to be hungry. Thor ate a few bites in Heimdall’s company anyway and then lost his appetite as Heimdall confirmed that Xandar had been destroyed.

“…Do you know anything about seeing the future?” Thor asked.

Heimdall stared straight ahead at the vastness of space. “I have always been thankful that was not my gift,” he said carefully.

 

When he got back to his room that night Val was waiting for him, sitting cross-legged and naked in the middle of his bed, her clothes strewn on the floor.

The sight of her filled him with that familiar rush of happy feelings— _dopamine, oxytocin,_ Bruce had said. He just wanted to breathe her in and melt into her, just wanted to hold her close. He’d found her, on Sakaar—they’d escaped that place together. Defeated Hela together. She was dear to him, beloved, and here she was waiting for him.

But her unsmiling face tore a rift in his mind. Her breasts were bare and so lovely; he knew he wanted to kiss them and suck them into his mouth but he remembered the anger in her tone as she’d said _you wanted to see my tits?_

He didn’t know what to do, so he reverted to politeness by default. “…How was your day?” he asked genially. “Did you and Bruce finish your project?”

“Yeah, it’s done,” she said, voice low. “I’ll read it aloud to everyone tomorrow, get it over with.”

“And hopefully feel a little better, afterwards?”

She just stared at him, like Loki had after Thor had suggested they might make it to Midgard before the Mad Titan caught them. “…Maybe,” she forced herself to say, and Thor got the feeling that was her attempt not to crush his hopes. “It’s just something I know I have to do.”

“All right, well,” Thor swallowed, and ran a hand over his too-short hair. “As that’s the case, I think it’s brave of you to do it. I’m proud of you for wanting to tell the truth.”

She slowly shook her head. _Impossible,_ she’d called him before. He knew that was what she was thinking now. She flopped down onto her back, breathing out and staring up at the ceiling. “…Come here,” she said to him.

He hesitated, but then he went, and sat on the edge of the bed. She scooted over a little, tensing her shoulders against the mattress. “Let’s do it your way again,” she said. “Like this morning. You on top, slow and easy.”

Thor bit his lip, thinking hard. Something was off, something was out of place and he couldn’t ignore it, couldn’t flirt through it. She wasn't smiling. His instinct was to wrap her in his arms and tell her she didn’t have to do anything, slow or easy or any other way. But he knew that if he asked her if she really wanted it she would insist that she did.

“…What would you get out of that?” he wondered, face creasing in concern. 

She shrugged. “It was a long day, I’m tired of thinking about my life. I could get off,” she said. _Something to do and not think about,_ she’d said before. “And give you a good night’s sleep,” she continued. _If I want to serve you or be of use to you,_ she’d said. _Happy to be of fucking service._

She must have noticed the unhappy look on his face, because she frowned. “…And what’s wrong with that?” she asked.

Everything was wrong with that. It would be a favor, a transaction, exactly everything he didn’t want it to be. He knew she _liked_ him, thought he was good enough to be the King and all. He didn’t think she despised him; she wasn’t sleeping with her enemy. And he knew she was attracted to him, her body hungry for his. But her _heart…_

His empty eye socket felt itchy under the patch, so he rubbed at the eye he had left.

“You don’t feel the same way I do,” he stated. He’d known that all along, of course, but it needed to be said.

She snorted up at the ceiling. “What was your first fucking clue?”

He laughed at that, a choked little sound. He thumbed a bit of water from the corner of his eye.

“Don’t, _fuck,_ ” Val swore, sitting up. “Don’t do that,” she warned, sounding genuinely angry. _Don’t you fucking dare,_ she’d said before, when he’d only half-teased that he might.

“Why not?” Thor asked through a smile. “I’m allowed to be sad.”

Thor sensed a wave of aggression from her, and in the darkest part of his mind he recoiled from the thought that she might want to hit him for crying.

“And _I’m_ allowed to _not be_ in love with you,” she declared.

“I know that,” Thor assured her, wiping his nose on his wrist. He shook his head. “I would have never pressured you—and I wasn’t even going to tell you, at least for a while—not that I’d have denied it or anything once I figured it out, but, I wish my brother hadn’t mentioned it.”

Her expression softened, and Thor felt immediately relieved. “He said you fall in love a lot,” she said flatly.

“Yeah,” Thor took a breath. “Every couple years, once a decade or so. I’m not ashamed of that—it’s usually a good thing, usually, um, wonderful. Sometimes it’s unreciprocated but, I’ve never had anyone hate me for it.”

“Gods,” she put her hands on the sides of her face, like she might have an excruciating headache. “I don’t hate you for falling in love with me. I know you can’t help it; you can’t wish away your emotions any more than Bruce or I can. Your brother says it’s magic but it’s not like you drank a fucking love potion so you could be with me—no. It’s not your fault. But I do hate that you fell in love with _me,_ don’t you understand? I told you it shouldn’t be me; I’m not qualified for it, I’m not capable of it. I don’t have the capacity, I can’t make the space for it; I don’t even want to try. And it’s even worse because I do care about you, and I don’t want to hurt you.”

“And you don’t want to be hurt.” Thor knew that much, at least.

Her expression clouded. “I fell in love once,” she said darkly, and gave him a scathing look. “ _Once,_ ” she repeated, and then fell silent.

“…What happened?” Thor dared to ask.

She stared at him so hard it made tears spring to her eyes. “You’ll find out tomorrow,” she said. “When I read the thing and tell everybody.”

Val sniffled and wiped her cheeks. “Fuck,” she said, but there was no more fire in her tone. “You got me.”

She’d said that to him last night, he recalled with a pang, under much different circumstances.

She cast a guilty look up at him, like she remembered that too, like she knew how hard he was struggling now to resist the urge to embrace her, suppressing his desire to cradle her face in his hands and kiss away her tears. “…I don’t know if it’s crueler of me to leave or to stay," she said blankly. 

He saw a decision settle in her eyes and she got up, gathering her clothes off the floor.

“You’re going,” Thor stated the obvious.

“I need to get fucked,” she muttered. “And I’m not going to ask you—and don’t you dare offer. You want to hug and not fuck, I want to fuck and not hug. It won’t work.”

Thor cocked his head—and of course it was the optimism and the love making him feel this way, but he didn’t believe her. He thought it _could_ work, thought it had been working—gradually, painfully, but they’d been getting there. Every time he touched her it felt more right. He remembered each word she’d said in a fond tone of voice, how she’d squeezed his shoulders, how she’d kissed him. How she’d actually teased him and laughed, once or twice, and even back on Sakaar--

“And don’t you dare remind me,” she said, practically reading his thoughts. “Of how good you think we fit together. Because trust me, I have felt it for myself, and I’m fully aware that I could peg you to the floor right now.”

Thor felt like taking a risk—like fighting and falling in love, taking risks usually worked out for him.

“Do it,” he said, before considering just how well those other things had worked out for him with _her_ involved.

“Not a chance, you stupid boy, never even lost your temper in bed, nothing but smiles and giggles in bed for you, you told me yourself—and after Sakaar—”

“It’s not because of Sakaar,” Thor insisted. “Yes, that happened. But even if we’d met under different circumstances I would still feel this way about you. Val. I mean it. Go if you need to go. Do what you need to do, I won’t hold you here. I hope you find some peace, even if it’s not with me. You don’t have to be in love with me. But if you want me, then _I want you to have me._ ”

She’d said that exact thing to him before too—and she recognized it. He watched her compose herself, watched her search through her recollections of their conversations so she could play this game back to him.

“ _What would you get out of that?_ ” she challenged, recycling his question to him.

But he was ready for that one. “ _I like a good hard fuck as much as anybody,_ ” he echoed back to her. “ _Or maybe a bit more than your average_ —”

“Shut up,” she hissed at him, dropping the clothes she’d gathered. She put her hands on her head again, distressed. “Shut up. I know you don’t really want me to. I know you’re faking it.”

“I thought I _couldn’t fake anything_ ,” Thor said mildly—and of course that was something she’d told him too, back on Sakaar.

“So I’m supposed to fuck you like this—while I’m stressed and just need a way out of my own head—” her voice quavered, and Thor knew he would give her anything, everything, whatever she needed from him. “That’s what you want?”

“If it’s what you need,” Thor said, resolute.

She didn’t say anything. She was breathing faster, looking like she might tackle him or bolt for the door at any second, her eyes focused on his face with searing intensity. He forced himself to look away, in case something in his expression was begging her to stay—he really did want her to have the choice to leave. He wasn’t sure yet if she would.

“…What if I need you to order me?” she asked, voice breaking.

“…I won’t do that,” Thor said, with a slow shake of his head. “If I forced you, I’d be no better than—” he might have meant to say the Grandmaster, or Odin, but she was quicker.

“Me,” she said. “You’d be no better than me. And wouldn’t that be fucking fair. Fucking justice.”

“That wouldn’t be justice at all,” Thor said quietly. “Just more suffering.”

She finally tried to smile at him, shakily, and he knew then that she’d made up her mind to leave. “…There are still things you don’t know,” she said. "About who I am and what I've done." She found her shirt on the floor and tugged it over her head. “Tomorrow, after—after I read the thing—”

“Okay,” Thor agreed right away. “We’ll talk tomorrow. After.” She nodded and pulled her pants on, in a rush to get out of there. Thor looked away, a little sad that she was leaving, but relieved that she’d made her decision. Though he'd be alone tonight and miss her company, at least Thor wouldn’t have to worry about whether or not he’d coerced her to stay. 

Once she had her boots on he stood up and headed across the room to walk her out. Val took two steps towards the door. Then she turned to him and hugged him tight.

He stayed still, expecting it to be quick, expecting her to let go immediately. But she held on, and finally he settled his arms around her shoulders. When she still didn’t pull away, he rested his chin on the top of her head.

He could feel her heartbeat. It felt strong, steady. She would be all right, he knew. Whatever horrible things she would reveal tomorrow, whatever horrible existence she had endured, she was here now and she would continue to survive. Topaz had been wrong about Val when she’d called her a quitter. Val wasn’t going to quit. And Thor loved her for that too—even if she couldn’t love him back. He didn’t mind. He would love her anyway.

They didn’t speak, just stood together for a long moment. Then she drew in a breath, and pulled away. 

Thor let her go.

 

By morning people were calling it _The Confession of the Last Valkyrie._ The hangar bay was packed with people, all standing around forum-style waiting for the speech to begin. Thankfully all in attendance were adults as far as Thor could tell. Loki mentioned that Korg had volunteered to supervise all the children for a while; Korg already knew enough of Val’s story to not need to hear the rest, and he was great with kids besides.

When ‘the last Valkyrie’ herself appeared everyone fell silent. She spotted Thor and Loki and Bruce in the middle of the crowd and moved towards them, scaring people out of her way with her look of determination alone. The sight of her striding towards him made Thor’s heart quiver; no matter what she said about herself today, Thor knew he would still be in awe of her, would still love her.

It didn’t worry him at all that the spell on the book had indicated that her confession would hurt him—his own discomfort seemed a trivial price to pay for her peace of mind, for the clearing of her conscience.

Loki had already set up a crate in the center of the room to stand on and had announced what they already knew, that this would be an account of the Valkyrie’s crimes on Sakaar, culminating in an explanation of what had happened to Thor on that terrible planet. Now Val stepped up onto the crate, looking around the room as if meeting everyone’s eyes at once. The book labelled _142_ was steady in her hands.

Finally she locked eyes with Thor. He gave her a small nod—he was ready if she was.

“My name is Brunnhilde,” she began, speaking loudly enough for the whole assembly to hear her but staring directly at Thor.

And there it was already, in the very first sentence: Thor felt a bit like he’d been stabbed in the stomach. Her name—she hadn’t trusted him enough to tell him her name. He’d only asked her once, when he’d settled on calling her Val; and then she’d never bothered to correct him. That hurt a little.

It hurt much worse to hear about her final mission as a Valkyrie, how she’d failed to carry out the orders of her King, failed to protect her sisters, failed to defeat Hela. How she had lost the only person she had ever loved. Her soulmate had died defending her and Brunnhilde had fallen, helpless, to the collection point for lost things. 

“There was nothing left in me but anger,” she said, and spared a glance at Bruce before returning her gaze to Thor. “I had no will to live. I dug a grave for myself in the trash and waited to die of exposure. I killed anyone who tried to drag me out. Their bodies attracted more predators, more Scrappers, and I killed them all. The piles of corpses around my chosen gravesite grew until I thought I might die from their stench alone.”

By now she had opened the book, and was several pages in, not quite reading from it but glancing at it occasionally, as if to check that the words on the page hadn’t vanished while she wasn’t looking.

“At last I was captured,” she continued her story. “And taken to the arena. I refused to let any of the gladiators end my life—refused to let one of them do for me what I was unable to do for myself. For years I killed and killed and stayed alive. I was unpopular with the crowds because I killed without emotion. I was warned I would be disqualified from the Contest but my response was to dare the Grandmaster to execute me in public. The underground revolutionaries of the day latched on to my case and would have made me a martyr, though I didn’t care about their cause. As a slight to the revolutionaries the Grandmaster took me out of the Contest and,” she swallowed and her eyes flickered to Loki for an instant.

“ _Reformed_ me,” she went on. “Making me into one of his personal attendants, one of his personal slaves. I followed him silently on an invisible leash wherever he went, drugged and obedient and painted to match the furniture. I existed that way in the palace for years until I forgot how I’d gotten there. At last there were no more revolutionaries left from that generation or the next who remembered my act of defiance. The Grandmaster grew bored of me, but was too fond of me to Dispose of me properly so he threw me a party and gave me my freedom. I woke up naked and discarded in the streets of the city.”

She took a breath, and Thor carefully controlled his own breathing. She looked down and turned a page in the book, then looked back at Thor. “After that, I did what people do in the streets of cities all over the universe in order to survive. I resorted to theft and violence; I abused the weak. I had no scruples, no remorse. I did anything for money, to appease my cravings for the drugs I’d existed on in the palace. I was a killer for hire and didn’t care who I was paid to kill. I ate the flesh of the dead.”

There was an uncomfortable muttering in the crowd at that, but Thor heard someone whisper, “ _That’s common on Sakaar,_ ” and he found himself nodding in sympathy. It twisted his stomach to think about, but it _had_ been common on Sakaar; he wasn’t surprised that it had been part of her experience there.

“I spent more time drunk, as much time as possible. I learned to sell my body, for easy money, or whenever I was too drunk to properly kill people. I earned a reputation for carnal violence, for doing things to people that few others would do to them. When erotic suicide became a fad, a popular way for the rich and famous to end their lives, I was paid to strangle and drown and bleed them out however they wanted. I made plenty of money, enough to keep me drunk. Eventually I made enough to afford my own slaves and whores to serve me, to do to me what I was paid to do to other people.”

There was another murmur from the audience, and Thor felt his heart tighten in pain. It wasn’t totally unexpected, but it hurt to hear it. The spell on the book had been right about the effect this story was having on him, but he knew he needed to hear this—because she needed to say it, to get it out.

“During that time, every slave I bought, I sold for less than I’d paid for them, decreasing their value by their association with me. They were things to be used and I used them. If they were sullen I hated them for being sullen, if they were eager I hated them even more. If they cried…” she looked at Thor and then looked away. “…I hated them most of all. If they displeased me enough I didn’t sell them; I labeled them Disposable, worthless, condemning them to horrible deaths. I did not care how they died. I wanted nothing but to drink, forget, and die myself.”

That much at least sounded familiar to Thor; she’d told him as much back on Sakaar. 

“Eventually my reputation declined and my career fizzled out. I slipped further into drunkenness and poverty. I returned to the pit I’d dug centuries earlier and began living in my intended grave, killing anyone who trespassed. I went years at a time without speaking to anyone. One night in a tavern I killed a new group of revolutionaries. I didn’t know who they were or what they stood for, but they had spilled my drink and it cost them their lives. My skill impressed the Grandmaster’s new captain of the guard, and she offered me a job as her lieutenant. I took it; I was exhausted from living alone in the trash and I missed the haze of drugs in the palace, so I went crawling back into the Grandmaster’s service.”

Thor nodded again; he’d heard a portion of this from Topaz. “The Grandmaster remembered me and was surprised that I was still alive,” Brunnhilde went on. “He invited me to his parties. And I…” her eyes dashed to Loki again. “ _Indulged_ him, and all of his friends. Topaz assigned me all the bloodiest missions hunting down the latest batches of revolutionaries, who were practically defenseless. I took out my frustrations on my subordinates in my cohort, abusing them until they lost all discipline. I was wild and out of control, constantly intoxicated, convinced I would be made Disposable and share the fate to which I’d condemned so many others. But instead I was released from the palace guard and turned back out into the streets once more, to fight and fuck and feed with the rest of the lost and unloved.”

She took a breath and turned yet another page. “Years later I found myself battling an interloper who had enough fighting skill to remind me of the arena. I tried to kill him and he refused to die, so I took him alive and sold him to the Contest for a hundred units, which was more money than I’d seen in months. They told me they’d pay me two hundred units if I could capture another like him. I scoured the wastelands and the streets and the tunnels and when I couldn’t find one, I captured someone who’d fallen through, enslaved him and trained him to fight. When he was good enough to beat the first one I’d sold, I sold him, and earned the promised two hundred. With that money I was able to register myself as a numbered Scrapper, and began to harvest contenders for the Contest.”

Thor started to feel a tiny bit hopeful that maybe now the worst parts of the story were over. “Sometimes years would pass with no worthwhile fighters appearing,” she continued. “Other times I would catch them in groups. Sometimes I would train them, polish their skills before I sold them. Over the years I made a name for myself. I could harvest larger, stronger and more highly skilled fighters than almost any other Scrapper. But I was still impoverished, drinking all my profits, pissing off the wrong competitors and having to kill the wrong people far too often. Another century passed and I could feel myself getting my wish; I was drinking and forgetting and dying a little more each day. I made no friends, only more and more enemies. I was banned from certain bars and brothels. I had to constantly watch my back. I cared for nothing and no one.”

She stared hard at Thor and then her eyes turned to Bruce, softening. “One day an unusual creature fell through, one with more raw strength than I’d ever seen. Scores of Scrappers, entire gangs, tried and failed to subdue him. I followed at a safe distance and watched the destruction. For weeks the creature roamed the wastelands, scavenging for food, killing anyone who tried to harm him. Each time that he was strafed from above he became more interested in taking cover, until at last he dug a burrow in the trash and curled up inside it to wait, much as I had done myself when I had first arrived. That’s when it occurred to me that if I could gain his compliance, I could sell him to the Contest for enough to settle my debts and buy my own ship.”

“One night I approached his den and asked for shelter from the rain, and he let me stay. A few days later I killed some Scrappers who had been laying a trap for him, and he realized I had protected him. I lived with him after that; I brought him food and pretended to be his friend. I lied to him about my own time in the arena and convinced him he would enjoy being a gladiator. He came with me willingly on the day I sold him. I earned twenty-three million units for selling the one person who’d ever trusted me on that planet. I celebrated my new fortune so wildly I wound up poisoned, and I woke up in a charnel house, at the bottom of a heap of bodies considered too contaminated to be ground up for meat.”

Bruce made a small noise and Thor looked over at him; this part of the story was plainly affecting him, even though he’d been able to open the book. Brunnhilde turned a page, pressing on. “For a while I was too sick even to drink; when I recovered and learned the Hulk was thriving in the arena I bought a ship, I settled scores, I drank and forgot. I continued to harvest slaves from the wastelands. I lived in my ship. Time passed, and Hulk grew lonely; he asked for me and I was arrested and taken to him. Once again I pretended to be his friend, though I could hardly stand to look at him.”

She stared at Bruce for a long moment. “I was put on a contract as the Hulk’s official trainer. I supervised his exercises in the arena and escorted him on outings in the city; I took him to and from the Grandmaster’s parties because no one else was as good at keeping him happy. I demanded more and more pay for those services, until I had enough money to afford lodging in the city and hangar fees for my ship. Hulk became the Champion; the Grandmaster once again favored me. None of my enemies could touch me then; I did as I pleased, took whatever I wanted, killed anyone who got in my way. And then one day I captured Thor.”

There was a murmur from the crowd and Thor sensed the people looking at him, but he was focused on her face, on the horrible weight in her eyes. “The scanners on my ship told me he would be a contender based on durability and strength alone. I knew he was Asgardian, not that I cared. He was just another slave to sell, though much more valuable than most. When he told me he was the son of Odin, I didn’t care. I hadn’t thought of the Allfather for centuries; my first thought when I heard his name was that I was glad his son would be slaughtered in the arena, lost and unloved. Part of me hoped Odin would learn of it and mourn. I took ten million units and left Thor to die.”

She took a breath and flipped a page. “But he didn’t die,” she said, and looked around the room at her fellow Asgardians. “He was too strong; the Grandmaster brought his fight against the Hulk to an early end, and reassigned Thor to the most violent whorehouse on Sakaar.”

There was only the barest rustle of a reaction from the crowd, as everyone waited for what she would say next. “There, because I had harvested him, I was hired to train him as a whore for the Grandmaster’s use,” she said, and a stillness fell over the hangar bay. “I was paid for my trouble in the usual combination of money and threats that the Grandmaster would be displeased if I failed. I took the job because,” her voice trembled, and she stared at Thor as if she could incinerate him with her eyes.

“Because I wanted to hurt him. I had seen how much power he had, in the arena, how much stupid useless _power_ Odin gave his children. I wanted to see the son of Odin brought low, wanted to see him reformed as I had been, on the end of the Grandmaster’s leash. If the Grandmaster wanted him painted to match the furniture, I would’ve painted him myself. After everything I had done, he dared to call me a Valkyrie, dared to look at me with hope in his eyes, and I hated him for that, hated him for _not hating me._ And after all those centuries of experience, I thought it would be easy to break him. So I took the money—and I raped him.”

She closed her mouth and let that information settle across the room. “But,” she said once the stunned silence began to flicker out. “I failed to break him. Instead, he broke me. For the first time on Sakaar, I _cared_ that what I had done was wrong. The reality I had built for myself was shattered. I clung to the pieces of it, to my identity as a Scrapper, until in a flash I was forced to remember the person I had been before Sakaar. I remembered everything I had been killing myself to forget. And Thor was offering me a chance to go back and finish the mission from the day I fell. A chance to kill Hela—and die in the process. I never intended to survive, once I laid eyes on Hela again. Yet here I am, alive.”

Brunnhilde flipped to the final page of the book, and frowned. She looked to Loki, and tipped the book to show him that half the page was blank. “The last part’s missing here,” she muttered, flipping the page back and forth as if to lure the words into visibility. Thor checked his brother’s expression; Loki’s eyebrows were high in his classic ‘wasn’t me’. “Anyway it’s no matter, I remember what I wanted to say,” she cleared her throat, looking resolutely at Thor.

“My name is Brunnhilde, and I am not a Valkyrie. I have broken every oath I ever swore. I have committed more crimes than I can count. I have enslaved, abused and murdered thousands of people.” Apparently that was the end of what was written in the book, because she closed the cover and resumed staring at Thor. “I can never atone for the harm I’ve caused. I don’t want to be forgiven. And I am unworthy of the admiration and the kindness, the respect and the love that I have been shown aboard this vessel, by all of you, and especially by my King. Your love is a gift I cannot accept.”

She stepped down off the crate, and Thor couldn’t help but smile, because he already knew why that last part hadn’t been in the book—and if she didn’t figure it out on her own, he might explain it to her later. 

Sometimes it was difficult to see the truth about yourself, even if it was as plain as a spell on a book.


	14. Bad Things Happen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realized I had to take this story through Infinity War--that's why this chapter is 15,000 words long :')
> 
> Warnings for Infinity War spoilers, I guess? Seriously at this point I doubt anything could actually spoil that movie for anyone, but, consider yourselves warned. Also, because pop culture references are canon... ah, you'll see. :)

Chapter 14: Bad Things Happen

 

Thor didn’t see Val—Brunnhilde—for the rest of the day. After she had said everything she’d needed to say, Loki had taken over and told his own story about Sakaar, with heavy emphasis on the personality of the Grandmaster. While the crowd had been spellbound by Loki’s tale, Bruce and Brunnhilde had quietly disappeared.

Thor found them late that night, in the lonely gloom of the abandoned observation deck, sitting side by side. As much as he wanted to speak with both of them, he also respected that the two of them had formed a bond, and he didn’t want to intrude on their time with each other. 

Brunnhilde turned her head and bristled as she noticed him hovering in the doorway. “…Thor’s here,” she muttered to Bruce. 

“I can go,” Thor offered immediately, not wanting to intrude. “If you don’t…” 

Bruce looked over his shoulder and tried, pitifully, to give Thor a smile. “Hey,” he said in greeting. “Um, it’s fine. I mean, it’s your ship.”

Thor didn’t feel like it was his ship; he felt like everyone aboard had an equal claim to it. But he swallowed the urge to say so and moved towards them, bouncing a little on the balls of his feet. They were sitting on a bench in front of the big window, and he had to choose whether to go around to Bruce’s side or Brunnhilde’s. He picked Bruce’s. 

“…Little bit stressful day,” Thor commented, not quite sure what to do with his hands. 

“Yeah,” Bruce agreed. Brunnhilde didn’t say anything. 

Thor looked out the window. “This is a nice place to come and sit,” he went on. “Peaceful. Less crowded than the other decks.” 

“Much less claustrophobic,” Bruce confirmed. “Great view of the stars.”

“Stars, yes,” Thor enthused, looking out at those countless points of light. He cleared his throat. “Those… sure are stars.” 

Brunnhilde made a tiny scoffing noise, and Thor could practically hear her rolling her eyes. “Have a seat, your majesty,” she said, alleviating some of the awkwardness. “We were just saying how you and Bruce need to have a chat.” 

“All right…” Thor breathed. His heart sped up a bit, like a metronome set one tempo too fast for the song. Hoping to negate that hurried feeling, he moved slowly as he sat down next to Bruce—and noticed the way that Bruce went rigid beside him. Fearing that maybe he was too close to Bruce’s personal space, Thor scooted away a few inches, as far as he thought he could get without feeling excluded from the conversation he’d just been invited to join. 

Bruce heaved a sigh, not looking at Thor. “…So how’d it go with Loki’s part of the story?” Bruce asked, sparing Thor from having to initiate this part of the dialog. 

“Oh—good, I think,” Thor rushed to answer. “Apparently he was plotting to overthrow the ‘insane and debauched’ Grandmaster all along, and never imagined that an acquaintance of his from Midgard would appear along the way. Wrapped the whole story up nicely for everyone and came up with the perfect thing to say at the end—how we hope to never see pain nor pleasure peddled in our midst. I think everyone got the point.”

Bruce rasped a laugh. “He called the Hulk his _acquaintance?_ ”

Thor nodded. “Mm-hm. Gave you heaps of praise for helping me escape.”

“What’d he say about _me?_ ” Brunnhilde asked bluntly.

“Um,” Thor scrunched up his face, trying to remember how Loki had phrased it. “He might have given himself credit for persuading you to join our side—said it took some effort to convince you but that we never would have gotten off that planet without your ‘timely and courageous’ assistance. Something like that.”

She stared hard at Thor, her jaw clenched. “…He raided my brain,” she informed him. “Did this sort of nasty trick with my memories. That’s how he ‘persuaded’ me.”

“…ah,” Thor said, dismayed but not wholly surprised. “That’s awful.”

“Not your fault,” Brunnhilde muttered. “Just thought you should know, since your brother may have glossed that over for you.”

Thor sighed. “Look, I don’t know what he told you he was going to say up there today, but, Loki did exactly what I needed him to do. And he really—he gave all the credit to the two of you, for our escape—and didn’t even mention how he brought this ship for us. Loki’s being… generous these days. I should probably be alarmed, but, I’m too tired to care all that much about whatever he’s plotting. So, if he wants to be nice, I’ll just be thankful for that, for as long as it lasts.”

Bruce looked at him for a long, quiet moment, and Thor wished Bruce would tell him whatever was on his mind—the one thing that had been conspicuously absent from both Brunnhilde and Loki’s accounts of Sakaar had been any mention of what the Grandmaster had gotten for his birthday.

“Well, here’s to hoping it lasts for a good long while,” Bruce said softly, and Thor gave him a grateful smile that started in his ribs and wriggled its way up to his eyebrows. 

Talking about his brother now seemed an acceptable subject, so Thor decided to stick to that track for a while. “He even said some nice things about _me,_ if you can believe it,” he confided amicably. “Said I was brave and determined and so forth, though he probably just meant I was stubborn.” 

“You _were_ brave.” Bruce’s voice dried out, turning brittle.

Thor sensed he’d tripped over something here, and looked questioningly at Brunnhilde, wondering what he’d missed. She gave him a look that was almost pitying. “…He watched the video,” she explained. “Of you and Hulk.”

“Oh.” Thor was taken aback.

No one said anything for a full minute, all three of them staring straight ahead at the stars. Eventually Thor slid his eye over to Brunnhilde, and found her side-eyeing him back, over Bruce’s bowed head. She frowned at him and gave a tiny jerk with her chin, wordlessly indicating that Thor ought to say something to Bruce. 

“…And that’s what you, uh, that’s what Bruce and I need to have a chat about?” Thor guessed, his voice a bit pinched. 

Bruce took a sharp sip of air and began to speak, words in a jumble. “Yesterday, when Loki and Val—I mean Brunnhilde—were writing that book, I tried to capture my own thoughts, my own guilt, like a journaling exercise, but Brunnhilde looked over what I wrote and—she asked me point-blank who I was writing about, because what I had written wasn’t about the Hulk. And watching the video would prove it. So… we found a copy of it and,” he paused to gulp for air. “I watched it. I totally expected to hate myself a hundred times worse after seeing it, but…” 

Thor realized he’d been holding his breath. He counted his own pulse for three beats and finally prompted Bruce with a careful: “But?”

“The video—it wasn’t as pornographic as you might think—it was mostly just close-ups of our hands and faces. But it was more than enough to see what was really going on there, and,” Bruce turned his face upward to meet Thor’s gaze. “I want to thank you for what you did.” 

Thor blinked in surprise. He didn’t know what he’d done besides give in to the Grandmaster’s scheme and go along with the whole dreadful ordeal. He hadn’t deliberately tried to make it difficult for Hulk, but it _had_ been difficult; Hulk himself had said it was bad. For Bruce to feel grateful made no sense. “…I’m not sure I did anything…” Thor began awkwardly.

Bruce filled his lungs and studied Thor, his dark eyes solemn and sincere. “Facing that horrible situation, you chose to be kind,” Bruce explained. “You had every right not to, but, the whole time—you treated Hulk with kindness. One word from you and he, he would have felt like a criminal, like a monster. All the things I accused him of being. You could have blamed him, made it clear that he was complicit. But instead of condemning him, you, you made him feel like you didn’t hate him.”

“Of course I didn’t hate him,” Thor interrupted, confused. 

Bruce’s voice wavered. “You acted like it wasn’t the most disgusting thing in the world for him to touch you.”

“Hey,” Brunnhilde said cautiously to Bruce, as Thor recoiled from the bitterness of that notion. “That’s not Hulk, remember?”

“I know,” Bruce said raggedly, and Thor had no idea what they were talking about. He looked pleadingly at Brunnhilde for explanation, hoping that once again she’d help him out. 

She seemed to understand his unasked question. “The monster in the back of Bruce’s mind,” she explained to Thor. “Isn’t the Hulk.” 

Bruce took a loud breath in. “Yeah,” he said. “I know—I know the Hulk isn’t him; I made Hulk up to defeat him. But sometimes I forget that people don’t feel the same way about the Hulk as I feel about…that other monster.” 

Thor nodded slowly, straining to understand. He’d never felt hatred towards anyone to the point where he felt that being touched by that person would be ‘the most disgusting thing in the world’—being touched by the Grandmaster had grossed him out, but Thor could tell that whatever he felt towards the Grandmaster paled in comparison to the rage that Bruce harbored towards his ‘other monster’. 

“…Given the circumstances,” Thor said carefully, “I thought Hulk was being rather nice to me, too. He did what he had to do, but, he at least tried to be gentle. And he tried to stop, when, um,”

“Yeah, I saw.” Bruce’s shoulders slumped, and it took all of Thor’s willpower not to scoot closer and wrap an arm around him. “What I’m saying is, you could have made it clear to Hulk that he was being used as a tool for something depraved,” Bruce continued. “That would have been totally fair. Nobody could ever say you were obliged to be so kind to, to someone who was actively hurting you—who _knew_ he was hurting you—but, that’s exactly what you did. You chose to protect the Hulk from the knowledge that he was being manipulated for something totally evil. I was…I almost feel guilty admitting this, but, seeing you get through that, seeing that you didn’t hate the Hulk even for a minute, the whole time—it was weirdly, um, humbling.” 

“And, so… you’re no longer angry at Hulk about it?” Thor asked hopefully. 

“I’m still horrified that it happened, but…that’s right. It was wrong for me to be angry at Hulk about it,” Bruce confirmed.

“Good, that’s good,” Thor huffed in relief, and he inched closer to Bruce on the bench before he could stop himself. He half-turned towards him, leaning in—and Bruce met him with an awkward hug, fumbling for a second as he debated where to put his arm—over Thor’s or under it (under, Thor helped him figure out). 

Bruce’s hand patted Thor’s back, and Thor settled both of his arms around Bruce’s shoulders, drawing him in—and the willing lean of Bruce’s chest against his own in that moment was a greater blessing to him than anything else could’ve possibly been.

He met Brunnhilde’s gaze and caught the oddest look on her face—like maybe she wanted to smile, but thought the moment was too serious for it. So Thor smiled for her, for all three of them, and hugged Bruce tight. 

A little tremor went through the muscles of Bruce’s back, and for a split-second Thor thought maybe Bruce was holding onto him with a bit more strength than any mere human ought to be able to. “That reminds me,” Thor blurted out, and Bruce drew back just enough to look up at him. “…Can I talk to Hulk?” 

“Yeah, uh, I guess,” Bruce muttered, a vague shadow of distress in his expression. “I’m not, uh, not gonna Hulk out, though, so,” 

“That’s all right,” Thor assured him, still holding him by the shoulders. “You don’t have to Hulk out. But, do you think Hulk can hear me?”

Bruce nodded, and Thor searched his face, freshly conscious of how much Bruce resembled his greener self. “Hulk, I want you to know… you’re going to be okay.” 

Recognition quivered in Bruce’s eyes, and Thor went on. “I think you’ve suffered more from all this than you’ve been able to tell us. You’ve learned that being strong doesn’t mean that bad things won’t happen to you. No matter how strong you are, you can still be hurt. You can still be forced to do things you don’t want to do. And that’s what happened to you on Sakaar: you were used, to kill people and to hurt people. But I want you to know, it doesn’t make you less of a person. Just because bad things happened to you, it doesn’t have to change who you are.” 

“But what if it _does_ change you?” Brunnhilde cut in. 

A buzz of happy energy sparked in his heart as he looked up at her. “In that case,” he told her warmly, “You can choose to change again.” 

She set her jaw and stared at him, smoldering, until Bruce snuck a glance at her. 

“Don’t be angry,” mumbled Bruce, or maybe Hulk, or maybe both of them. “Just hug.” He reached for her with one arm, wrapping it around her and pulling her in. Her arm overlapped Thor’s, across Bruce’s shoulders, and once again she locked eyes with Thor over the top of Bruce’s head. 

There was a lot more that Thor had to say to her, but he figured it could wait—this was important, this moment, letting Hulk know that they cared about him, that they were still his friends. Thor reasoned that if Hulk felt better, if Hulk knew that someone understood and supported him, that might help Bruce feel better too. 

“…Is it working?” Thor asked hopefully after a minute. 

Bruce shifted and blinked up at him. “What?”

“Does Hulk feel a little better?” Thor wondered. 

“Hah,” said Bruce, patting Thor’s back a final few times. “Actually, yeah. I think maybe he does.” 

“Magic fucking hugs,” Brunnhilde grumbled under her breath, separating herself from their embrace. 

“Not magic,” said Thor brightly. “Chemistry. Oxytocin, wasn’t it?” 

Bruce gave him a lopsided grin that almost looked shy. “Sure,” he agreed. “Oxytocin.”

Thor gave Brunnhilde his best ‘told-you-so’ smirk, rubbing Bruce’s back as he let him go. “Well whenever Hulk needs some of that, he knows where to find me,” Thor declared. 

“Ha, thanks.” The little smile on Bruce’s face had grown less bashful, less reserved. “I’ll keep that in mind.” There was no tint of green in sight, but Thor felt like Hulk might’ve been smiling too, somewhere in there. “And on that note,” Bruce announced, standing up. “I’m off to bed. Like you said, Thor, it’s been a kind of a stressful day, and, now I’m feeling relieved enough to actually sleep.”

“Would you like some company?” Brunnhilde asked Bruce. 

Bruce’s mouth fell open as his mildly soothed expression dissolved into wary disbelief. “Like… in bed?” he wondered, aghast. 

“Or wherever,” she said with a shrug. 

“N…no?” Bruce replied, looking back and forth from Thor to Brunnhilde in confusion. “I mean, thanks, I think, that’s nice of you to offer, but, I need to sleep alone and… aren’t the two of you together?!” 

Brunnhilde snorted a laugh. “We’ve fucked,” she said dismissively, and then slid an eye over to Thor, as if daring him to challenge her on that point.

“But we’re not ‘together’, no,” Thor answered, not missing a beat. “Not in the way you mean. If you two would be able to comfort each other I’d be happy for you.” That was true, and he hoped they both knew he meant it, even if he wasn’t mentioning the part about how sad he’d be for himself, if they chose each other and left him out. 

“Uh-huh,” Bruce said in a tiny voice, and then he quirked an eyebrow at them. “Man, we are living in some strange times, because _Loki_ of all people is totally right: you two need to work that out.” 

“It’s all my fault,” Thor said with a sigh. “I’m the one with the, uh, the inappropriate emotions.” He gave Brunnhilde a forlorn little look, and was puzzled by the flare of rage he received in response. 

“What the fuck,” she swore. “Can you please blame someone else for _something,_ just once in your life?” 

She’d totally lost him. All he could do was frown, wondering what he’d missed. She was the one who’d told him his feelings were unacceptable, were misdirected. And he blamed other people for lots of stuff. He blamed the Grandmaster, he blamed Loki, he blamed his father… 

“Why can’t it be _my_ fault?” she demanded, standing up to pace in front of him. “Why are you so determined to take responsibility for everything onto your own shoulders?”

Thor’s frown deepened, and he thought maybe this was a trick question. “Because I’m… the King?” he asked tentatively. “And, that’s…my job?”

Brunnhilde turned her furious eyes to Bruce. “I had his ass in the air, his hands cuffed behind his back,” she recalled, voice sharp. “And you know what he said? He said he felt _sorry for me_.” 

They both tilted their heads and looked at Thor, and he blinked back at them. “…Well, that was how I felt,” he said lamely. 

She snarled in frustration and turned away, and Thor’s heart began to ache with the now-too-familiar desire to comfort her, to gather her up and let her take him apart. Bruce shied away from the sudden spike of tension, looking like he wished he could jump into the nearest trash compactor to escape. Thor sensed his discomfort and wanted to let him know he could go, but also wanted him to stay, so Brunnhilde could have an ally on her side—someone who could maybe understand her where Thor himself could not. 

“…Brunnhilde,” Thor said carefully. “Everyone knows now, about what you did on Sakaar. You aren’t blameless. You’re responsible for your own choices. I know, and I’ve already told you, that what you did—what you did to me, was wrong. And I’ve already told you I won’t punish you for it. What do you want from me?”

“Something I shouldn’t,” she muttered dangerously. 

Thor sensed an opening there, an opportunity to get to the bottom of something, and dove headlong towards it. “Do you still want to hurt me?” he challenged.

She looked like she’d been slapped. “You know I don’t,” she said. 

Thor crossed his arms over his chest. “Do you want the kind of relationship where we can take care of each other?” 

For a moment she didn’t answer, and Thor began to feel confident that he was right. Unless she decided to give up all together and run away, the only possible answer was to move ahead with whatever ‘taking care of each other’ was supposed to look like. 

Something clicked behind her eyes, like a key in a lock. “Bruce,” she said in a low voice. “Goodnight.”

Bruce looked startled but began backing towards the door. “Uh, you’re sure you’re both going to be okay?” he asked worriedly. 

“Yeah,” she said, not looking at Bruce. Her eyes were riveted to Thor now, laser-sharp. “We’re gonna work it out.” 

Thor gave Bruce his very best ‘it’ll-be-fine’ smile. “Wish us luck,” he said lightly. 

“…Good luck,” Bruce deadpanned, having made it to the door. He had one foot in the hallway already. “And um, don’t hurt each other?” 

“We won’t,” Thor promised. “See you tomorrow.”

Bruce let the door slide shut behind him, and both Thor and Brunnhilde listened as his shuffling footsteps faded down the corridor.

Now they were alone, the field of stars their only witness— except for Heimdall, probably. Their eyes found each other, and Brunnhilde stepped in close, standing between his knees while he remained seated on the bench. He had to tip his head back a little to hold her gaze. Her left hand came up to cup the side of his face, and he held perfectly still as she swiped her thumb across his lips. Then her fingers dug under the edge of the eyepatch, stripping it off his face. That seemed to be her signature move now, symbolically undressing him by exposing that damage. He didn’t mind in the least—the ugly wound was part of him and she was welcome to the truth of it. 

Her thumb scraped over his right eyebrow, over the pink-white scar, and then pressed lower, tracing the arc of the bone under his skin, the hard curve of the eyeless socket. He kept still as she gripped the underside of his chin with her other hand, holding his jaw steady, and hovered her thumb over the space where his eye used to be. He wasn’t sure what she was doing—it wasn’t like there was anything left for her to gouge out. 

“Submissive,” she muttered, as if she’d been conducting some test, some assessment.

A thrill bloomed through him. It wasn’t so much that he wasn’t _allowed_ to be ‘submissive’, it was just that he so rarely got the chance. 

“My room, right now,” she said, and Thor knew an order when he heard one—and was more than happy to comply. He made no effort to conceal the spring in his step as she marched him down the hallway—tension billowing around her like a palpable aura, with Thor nearly giddy on the fringe of it, _mm-hm-_ ing little chuckles to himself under his breath whenever he dared to check the expression on her face. The heat building under her skin was visible, nearly a glow. 

By the time they reached her cabin she was coiled like a cobra, while Thor in contrast felt lighter than he had in years, limber, all his muscles shaken out and slack, sails ready for the wind. He knew she was finally going to fuck his brains out, and he was going to love every minute. 

“Bed,” she snapped, once the door was shut. “Sit.” 

Thor sat, smirking at her, not caring in the least how gruesome his face must look without the patch in place.

“No, wait,” she said on an intake of breath. “Kneel.” 

“Hmm, even better,” Thor agreed huskily, and got comfortable on his knees next to the bed, his shoulders perfectly relaxed. She stood in front of him, meeting his soft smirk with a hard stare, and nudged his knees apart with her boot. He spread his legs to accommodate her and she stepped in, widening her own stance until her boots pressed the insides of his thighs. 

She shucked the vambraces from her arms and dropped them as if they’d been silk gloves instead. “You know what you want,” she muttered, bringing her hands to the sides of his face. Her fingernails raked his scalp as she tried her best to anchor her fingers in the too-short hair on the back of his head. 

Thor wasn’t sure if that had been a question, but he answered it anyway. “I do.” 

The slight tremble of her hands belied the steadiness in her eyes. “I can’t… I shouldn’t,” she whispered. 

He kissed the soft inside of her forearm, right at the base of her tattoo. “Yes you can and you should,” he said softly. 

She took two escalating breaths, not exhaling in between them, and seemed to commit. Except for her discarded armguards they were both still fully clothed. She controlled his head with both of her hands, as she’d done before, and pulled his face to her crotch. She rolled her hips against him, nice and slow, and he went with it, his hands running up her legs and his thumbs finding just the right points to press at the tops of her thighs as she thrust herself against his mouth. He kissed the leathery fabric of her pants, and then caught the material in his teeth. She gasped at that, and he bit down, just enough to be sure she could feel the pressure on her skin through her clothes. Then he let go, and placed a kiss just _there,_ where he was sure she was already throbbing. She clamped her hands around his ears and pulled him in, like she might try and climb into his mouth crotch-first. If she had a cock--

“If I had my cock on right now, I’d be ramming it down your throat,” she rasped. 

Thor grinned. “I was just thinking that exact thing,” he exclaimed. 

There was a beat, and then with a huff of half-muttered curses she went rummaging through the room’s drawers and cupboards. Thor sat back on his heels, watching in unveiled amusement as she found the thing she needed, straps and all. 

She stomped back over to stand before him. “If you want it, then put this on me,” she challenged, and Thor nearly laughed, because without a doubt, he wanted it. He accepted the strap-on cock and turned it over in his hand, glad that this one was definitely more of a toy than a weapon. He gripped it lengthwise, ridiculously, between his teeth. She snorted at that, but as his hands moved over her hips she seemed to understand--he was holding it in his mouth that way so his hands were free to undo the fastening of her pants and slide them down, out of the way. 

Her breathing shallowed as Thor snugged her cock into place for her, deftly looping the straps around her and buckling them good and tight. He looked up at her in boundless admiration, her hand now gripping the base of her cock as assuredly as if had been a part of her body all along. She certainly didn’t need a dick protruding from her crotch in order to look ferocious, but now that she had one, the aesthetic was stunning. Thor felt his expression move from eager to awestruck, to finally be here, with her, like this. 

She tapped the head of her cock to the side of his face, then dragged it across the wide line of his smile. He let his mouth soften, letting her push his lips over to one side and then the other. 

“You want this?” she asked, her voice low and tense. 

Thor held eye contact with her as she aimed her cock at his answer. He shook his head yes. 

“I want _you_ ,” he replied, his voice warm. He tongued the blunt tip and then sucked the head into his mouth, cherishing her reaction, how her eyes widened and her bottom lip went slack as she clenched her teeth and watched him swallow what she gave him. He had always hoped he was good at this, and from her responses now he was pleased to recognize that he at least _looked_ like he was. It might have been better if she could feel it for real rather than just stare at him and imagine it, but as her hands clamped around his ears and her fingernails scratched his scalp, urging him on, he could tell she was enjoying it. 

She pulled out of his throat, too soon—Thor felt like he’d barely gotten started. 

“You’re good,” she acknowledged, and he beamed at the validation, even if it was just what everyone always said.

“But you’re better,” he told her, fondly sincere. 

She smirked down at him, petting the back of his head. “You know I’ve had more practice. And maybe I just haven’t given you enough to work with,” she muttered. 

His eyebrows climbed, but he leaned forward and slowly sucked her cock all the way into his mouth, closing his eye and continuing to work forward as he felt it wedge down his throat—he pressed his lips to the base and just waited, not breathing, not choking, until she eased back, pulling out just as slow as he’d taken her in. As soon as his mouth was free, he smiled and said, “For tonight, this is perfect.” For a second she looked abashed, and Thor hurried to assure her that her suggestion of using something bigger hadn’t really been out of bounds. His face brightened. “Well, this plus two fingers, probably. Will be perfect.” 

She narrowed her eyes. “Two of mine, or two of yours?”

The pressure in the room rose, Thor’s heart surging, the tide of his happy anticipation flooding the atmosphere, charging it. He met her eyes. “…I can’t wait to find out.”

 

She had him on his back, his legs wrapped around her, his shoulders relaxed against the thin mattress of her cot. She lifted his ass onto her lap, and he let his knees fall open, taking her fingers with no trouble at all. They both knew he didn’t need this, not really, but he was enjoying how tender and cautious she was being. The care she was taking now was what made him crave it, more than the basic mechanics. The physical sensation of being worked open this way was always plain enough; in and out, in and _up,_ in and pressing, rubbing, stroking up inside him until he saw stars—but she was doing this exactly how he wanted it, _because_ he wanted it, and because she’d finally decided that she could. 

She let the tip of her cock nestle against the base of his as she used both hands, pulling him open horizontally first and then vertically, two fingers pulling up towards his balls while two from her other hand pulled down towards his tailbone, making him whine at the awesome stretch. 

When she told him to hold himself open for her, he did, and she rested the head of her cock between the rails of his fingers and grabbed his dick with both her hands, one on top of the other. And then she thrust forward, sliding into him all in one motion while pulling up and back forcefully with her arms—it had been the push of her hips that drove her in, but the effect felt more like she’d pulled his whole body down onto her cock, using his dick as a handle. 

Thor yelped in shock as she withdrew and then did it again. Rationally, he knew that couldn’t have worked—but _fuck_ she made it feel like it had, like she was moving his whole body back and forth along her cock. She kept her hands fisted tight, her arms working his dick as she plowed into him. Thor could barely believe the intensity of this, of her. She was a force of nature, using all her strength, all her ferocity, fucking him down to the core of his own power. 

“ _Wow_ ,” he gasped, when his brain managed to formulate something that resembled words.

Her eyes jolted to his face, and she kept riding into him, leaning down aggressively to sharpen the angle. He held her gaze in rapt astonishment, letting go of the tension he’d been unconsciously holding in his center. He had no doubts about giving her control of his body, assured that he was leaving himself in expert hands. 

There was a quiver, at the corner of her mouth, and her attempted frown committed mutiny and morphed into something much more beautiful. “How is your cock this hard while the rest of you has turned into mush?” she muttered, and Thor would have laughed, if he could’ve remembered how. 

“Don’t know,” he gasped, shaking his head. She polished the head of his cock with her palm, making him whine for her. 

“I want you inside me,” she decided, and bucked him up, and then up even further until he was sitting propped against the wall, her cock still in him to the hilt. She reached for the straps and began to unbuckle them. “I’m leaving this in you, understand?” she asked, and Thor nodded. “You’re gonna stay sitting on my cock while I sit on yours.” 

Thor whimpered at the thought, and then the reality, as she detached the strap-on from her body while leaving it wholly embedded in his. “You’re gonna hang on to that for me,” she purred. “When I come back for it, it better be right where I left it.” He nodded and shifted back enough to make sure he’d keep it in place. And then he was whimpering again as she straddled his hips and sheathed his cock inside her, the sliding heat and _squeeze_ so good his head snapped back and thumped the wall. 

“Easy, your majesty,” Brunnhilde scolded him fondly, and one of her hands cupped the back of his skull, to protect it from re-impacting the wall. “We told Bruce we wouldn’t hurt you, remember?” 

“ _Hnh_ ,” Thor grunted incomprehensibly, attempting to raise his hips a little and then abruptly discovering what happened when he sat back down. He gasped as she pressed her weight across his hips, driving him down onto the cock she’d left in position for him. Tears welled up in his eye from the glorious intensity of it. “ _My god_ ,” he managed to breathe. “Oh my god, Brunnhilde.”

He wrapped his hands around her hips and she bounced herself on his lap, and soon he was crying out at every slap of her ass against his thighs, because her cock was aligned so perfectly it was like she was trying to fuck her way onto it right where it was inside him. 

The sensation was overwhelming. “Go easy, go easy,” he pleaded after a few moments, and she immediately slowed her pace, refraining from pushing herself all the way down against him. 

“Are you good?” she asked directly, and he nodded, still gasping. 

“Just… can you be soft for me, a little?” he wondered, and with a look of surprise she complied, relaxing her walls around him and settling, almost passively, onto his lap. “Aaah, that’s good,” he mumbled, his eye fluttering closed. His shoulders heaved as he breathed, his cock jerking inside her almost with a will of its own. “May I…” he began, and then stopped himself. He wanted her permission to get off, but didn’t want to ask for it.

She clenched around him as suddenly tight as if he’d shocked her, which he was very sure he hadn’t. She leaned in and kissed his forehead, and Thor felt certain that she understood what he’d failed to ask. “Yes, my King. You may—but not yet.” 

Thor felt he might burst from competing emotions of disappointment and excitement, combining into a sense of anticipation as keen as the edge of a blade tracing his veins. He remembered all at once all the things she’d promised to do to him, that she’d hold him up against the wall, that she’d work her ass down onto his cock, that should would take her time. He wanted all of that and more, he wanted to bury his hands in her hair, wanted to suck his way up her neck, summoning moans from her throat like drawing water up from a well. 

So it was a good thing that she’d said ‘not yet’, Thor told himself. There was still so much to do. The pressure inside him had built and built, like a storm surging up to the stratosphere, ready to break itself apart—but he knew he could go even further if she asked it of him, could let that formidable tension inside him continue to grow. If there was a limit to his capacity for pleasure, he certainly hoped she’d help him find it. And if there wasn’t a limit, he still hoped she’d search for it anyway. 

Gently she eased herself up off his lap, gathered the straps of her cock from between his legs and gave them a little tug. “Give me that back now,” she instructed, and Thor tensed and relaxed, then tensed again, his breath catching as she pulled it out. 

Thor couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt so lusciously warm and loose, yearning for another go, another deep push of something thick and firm inside him. He had no words for how badly he wanted it, only an unchecked hope that she would give it to him. 

Brunnhilde climbed off the bed, standing to reset the harness and strap her cock back on. She nodded over at the little chair, parked innocently in the middle of the room. “Remember how you licked me out?” she asked, voice low.

“Of course. One of my favorite memories,” Thor replied. She stalked over to the chair and patted the back of it, arching an eyebrow at him. 

“Your throne,” she deadpanned, and Thor laughed, getting the hint. He moved across the room in two long strides and sat down, feeling a giddy fizzle of static in the air and doing his best to ground himself out.

“Wrong way,” Brunnhilde informed him. “Turn around, hang your ass off the edge.” 

Thor’s eyebrows shot up and he hurried to obey, straddling the chair with his chest facing the back of it. She stood behind him and grabbed his ass cheeks, squeezing, evaluating, her cock nudging casually against his spine. He realized the height was awkward, if she meant to fuck him like this—he was too low—

And as soon as that thought crossed his mind, the seat jolted underneath him as Brunnhilde picked up the chair, with him on it. Thor let out an exclamation of delight as she shoved the chair up against the nearest wall, bracing it there, Thor still perched astride it. He was now facing the wall, his ass level with her hips. She was so fucking strong—as strong as Thor himself, or maybe even stronger—it was nothing for her to hold him up like this, off the ground, chair and all. He was in love with her. She was—she was—

His brain short-circuited as she shoved the chair up higher, and then higher once more. Thor’s head was now barely a foot from the ceiling, and his ass—

Her mouth found his rim and she breached him with her tongue and he made no effort whatsoever to stop himself from yelling at how good it felt. He felt half-wild. A little bit of lightning scurried down his arms and dissipated at his fingertips, harmlessly discharged into the wall. 

“Gods, you like to shout,” she said fondly, when at last she came up for air. 

“ _Brunnhilde_ ,” he mumbled over his shoulder, voice a desperate mess. “ _Aaah_ —” his head snapped back and his shoulders hunched as she dipped her tongue into him again, hot and flat and delicate, a much softer touch than her fingers. 

When he was finally too worked up to yell anymore, and his shouts had crumbled into almost-quiet moans, she pulled her lips away and let the chair slide about a foot down the wall, catching its fall for a second and then dropping it further, so Thor’s hips were roughly level with her own. She adjusted her grip on the chair, still holding Thor completely off the ground, and leaned over his back. Her cock slid down between his cheeks and he thought he might scream out of sheer desire. 

“You ready for more?” she asked, low and sweet against his ear. 

Thor had never been readier in his life. He wanted this with every fiber, every cell, every atom of his being. _She was—_

 

For a long time after they were done, she let him hold her in his arms. When he had finally finished riding the avalanche of sensation and emotion all the way through one of the most seismic orgasms of this life, he’d tackled her into the bed in a bearhug, unashamedly crying in happy relief.

Hours later they were still under the covers, Thor still hanging on to her like he might’ve forgotten how to let go. And she was holding on to him, too, her hands absently stroking his shoulders, his back, whatever she could reach. Sometimes her fingers slowed, or stopped altogether, and Thor wondered if she might be about to speak—but then she’d tense and up and resume petting him, renewed in determination to be mindlessly soothing. Each time she almost spoke and then kept silent, Thor imagined a lid being screwed down on her heart, and gingerly hoped he might help her unscrew it, someday. 

“So that’s how it’s going to work,” she said at last.

“Mm?” Thor asked.

“Between us.” Her voice was resolute, unwavering. “That’s how it’s going to be, between you and me. I’ll take the reins; boss you around. Let you feel like you’re not in control.” 

Thor snuggled against her. “That sounds wonderful,” he admitted. “Everyone always expects me to be ‘large and in charge’ and it does get tiresome. I could use the reprieve.”

She nodded, her cheek rubbing against his chest. “All right.” Her voice was quiet, resigned, and something about it bothered Thor.

He stilled, waiting for the other shoe to drop. “…Is it what you want?” he dared to ask. 

“I don’t _want_ to want it,” she informed him. “I don’t deserve any of this. I don’t deserve _you_.” 

He let out a long, thoughtful sigh, and rolled onto his back, recalling all the things he’d wanted to tell her, in the aftermath of her confession. “You know…”

“Here it comes,” she muttered. 

Thor laughed. “…Am I that obvious?”

“Painfully,” she declared, but then matched his sigh with her own. “But go on. Give me your lecture or your pep talk or whatever anyway. Tell me bad things happened and that I’ll be okay, like that drivel you said to Hulk.” 

“Brunnhilde.” There was no consternation in his voice, only warmth. “Bad things happened. You’re going to be okay.”

She snorted at that, but wiped her nose on her wrist. “Yeah? How do you know?” 

He was quiet for a moment, making sure he really had all his thoughts in order. “Remember those things you said, that didn’t show up in your book?”

“Your brother’s spell was total crap,” she started to protest. “Should’ve known Loki couldn’t spell his own name correctly if a truth spell required it.” 

Thor grinned but shook his head. “I think that book was working perfectly. You said… you’re unworthy.” 

“Yeah, and that’s true, which is why your brother sucks at spells.” 

Thor turned his head to consider her profile, the stubborn groove of her frown. “Unworthiness is a subject I happen to know something about,” he mentioned, in his friendliest tone. “Tell me. What makes something _worthy?_ ” 

She shrugged. “What it’s made of,” she guessed flatly. 

“And how do you know what it’s made of?”

She blinked. “You test it.”

“But the test doesn’t change the substance,” Thor pointed out. “Either something’s made of the right material or it isn’t.”

“Ugh,” she groaned, glaring at him out of the corner of her eye. “If you’re trying to convince me I had something good inside me all along, some heroic destiny I was born for—”

“No, no, not at all,” Thor exclaimed. “What I’m saying is, maybe you were unworthy, back on Sakaar. But then you had a change of heart.”

She wasn’t convinced. “Oh, sure, like a flip of a switch? One little choice and I’m a whole different person?” 

“Well,” Thor wondered fondly. “…Aren’t you?” 

She froze, blinking hard at the ceiling, until a stir of anger thawed her out. “There’s no way it could be that easy.” 

“I wouldn’t call it easy,” Thor cautioned. “After all, you’re still going to be tested. That part might hurt.” 

She scowled. “So all it took was a mystical ‘change of heart’ and now suddenly I’m ‘worthy’,” she recapped, clearly not buying it. “What makes you think it works that way?”

He smiled at a swirl of memories, wondering when the right time would be to tell her that story. Not right now, but someday. 

“And what if I fail the test—and who’s testing me, anyway? Fate?” she demanded, annoyed. 

The thought of ‘Fate’ loomed in Thor’s mind, like watching a tidal wave rise before him in slow motion, knowing that it was about to crash over him. That would be another test. He pushed the ominous feeling aside. 

“I don’t know,” he answered honestly. “And it’s true that change is difficult, but the willingness to attempt it—that’s what matters.”

She sniffed and rubbed her nose again, and Thor gave her a minute to collect her thoughts. “Thor Odinson,” she grumbled at last. “God of sunshine and fucking rainbows.” 

It occurred to him that he probably could make a rainbow, even though he’d never tried to before. It was just a matter of water in the air, in a state somewhere between clouds and rain. He wondered what sort of emotions he might try to project, that would result in casting a rainbow across the sky. Something sort of sad-feeling, maybe, to summon the ideal sort of misty rain… but then to make sure the light would get through…

Thor’s brain fogged over, and he abandoned his mental exercise. As soon as he had a real sky to work with, he told himself, he would give rainbow-making a try. “…I didn’t know your name was ‘Rainbows’,” Thor teased. 

“Only if your name is ‘Sparkles’,” she returned, slightly vicious. Thor cuddled her closer, adoring the fact that she would never pull her punches. 

“Sparkles and Rainbows,” he mused playfully. “I like the sound of that.”

“Urgh, of course you do. I don’t know what’s harder to believe: that you’re King of Asgard, or that I’m somehow your royal consort.” 

He brought one hand up to the back of Brunnhilde’s head, his fingers moving through her hair. “You’re a lot more than that,” he murmured, pulling her close. “Don’t forget I’m still determined to earn that sword of yours. You promised you’d give me a few lessons.” 

Brunnhilde inhaled, slow and deep, and Thor kept talking. “Can’t you picture it? You chasing me around the cargo bay, slashing at my heels with your daggers, knocking me over the crates of supplies…I bet you’ll be an excellent instructor, no matter how annoying I am as a student.”

He felt her smile against his chest. “You’re going to look great in the armor,” she mused. “When we finally make you into a Valkyrie.” 

“I could try yours on for size, in the meantime,” Thor suggested lightly. “If the straps are adjustable?” 

“…I’m sure I can find a few things of mine where the _straps are adjustable_ ,” she said huskily.

“Hmm,” Thor considered, pursing his lips. “As long as they don’t interfere with the, um, the pre-existing equipment.” 

She laughed. “The one I have in mind is designed to work in tandem with all that ‘pre-existing’ junk,” she informed him. “Give your 'worthy' dick its very own double.” 

“Double? Ha.” Thor nestled down beside her under the covers, pressing the length of his cock to her thigh. “When the one I’ve got is this good, why would I need another?”

She laughed, and wriggled up to whisper in his ear, and told him. 

 

The next few days passed in a happy blur. Brunnhilde was true to her word when it came to combat lessons, chasing Thor around the hangar bays exactly as he’d hoped she would. Each time they crossed blades it took her twice as long to beat him, until finally she admitted aloud that he wasn’t half bad, and might even not be a totally hopeless oaf, which had Thor beaming as bright as if he’d won the realms’ highest award (even though at the end of the session, he was once again flat on his back with her blade under his chin). 

She was also true to her word when it came to holding Thor up against the wall in the shower, easing him onto her cock just as slowly as she’d promised. And finally, sometime after that, Thor had the opportunity to suck the soft undersides of her breasts into his mouth, his hand between her legs, carefully opening her ass with his fingers even as she strained to fuck herself on his thumb. The time they spent wrapped up in each other was therapy, it was comfort, it was stress relief. For Brunnhilde, it was about building trust. For Thor, it was an expression of love, because he still found _trust_ so easy. For both of them, it was good.

Ten days had passed since Ragnarok, then twelve, and on their fifteenth day in space there was a consensus among the Asgardians: they needed a break. Accepting that they weren’t actually dead was making people restless. If there had been any suitable planets nearby Thor would have liked to touch down, let people stretch their legs, but as it was they were just going to have to do their best to throw a party on the ship. 

The Statesman buzzed with activity on their sixteenth day in space, decorations going up, ale and wine being carefully selected from the ship’s reserves, rationed food being meticulously arranged to create the illusion of plenty. There was an unspoken agreement that the adult Asgardians would abstain from eating at this event, so that the children (and guests, which in this case meant all the non-Asgardians) could eat their fill. 

Thor watched the preparations coming together and couldn’t put his finger on what felt wrong. He paused on one of the catwalks over the cargo bay, considering the bustle of activity below, wondering why he felt out of sorts while everyone else seemed cheerful.

“Maybe it’s the lighting,” Loki suggested, materializing beside him. “Too… artificial.” He gave Thor a smile and rows of torches appeared, affixed to the ribs of the ship up and down the bay, flaring with golden flame. An enthusiastic murmur of approval rose from the people going to-and-fro, and so Loki added a series of braziers throughout the room, glowing orange and red, positioned wherever people had started to arrange little clusters of benches and seats. The magical firelight instantly transformed the room, causing people to cheer in delight at the effect. Thor imagined he felt the fake flames giving off genuine warmth. 

“That’s much better,” Thor approved, while Loki caused rows of lighted candles to appear on all the tables. “Feels almost like home,” Thor glanced up. “Except for the ceiling. This ceiling is too…oppressive. It’s like we’re in a coffin.” 

Loki rolled his eyes. “It’s the highest ceiling on board.”

“I know, but, do you think you could change it?” Thor asked plaintively. His face lit up as he thought of something. “Like at that school, for the wizard children?” 

Loki blink-blinked at him. “…Did you do anything on earth, besides watch movies?” he wondered, but then sighed and made the ceiling fade out, revealing a flawless canopy of stars.

The people below were rightly awed by the now-invisible ceiling, but there was one cry of alarm—Bruce, Thor recognized his voice.

“It’s just magic!” Thor called down to him, waving to him with both hands as he spotted him in the crowd below. “Everything’s fine!” 

Bruce looked a little sweaty but not quite green, and he gawped up at the brothers on the catwalk, plainly weirded out by the field of stars now visible above them. He nodded a few times, coming to terms with what he was seeing, and went about his way. 

“…Jane liked those movies,” Thor commented, finding it easy to transmute his vague sense of foreboding into something more like nostalgia. “She said I’d be one of the gryphon-children and she’d be one of the raven-ones but then I took this ‘sorting’ test on her computer, and,” he made a tapping motion in the air, miming the clicking of a mouse. “Maybe I did it wrong, but,”

“It put you in Hufflepuff?” Loki guessed, and burst into laughter without a trace of contempt. The carefree sound was a balm to Thor’s heart—he couldn’t remember the last time he’d heard his brother laugh like that.

“For the record, I thought Jane probably belonged with the gryphon-ones. Same for Sif. And, come to think of it, Brunnhilde as well,” Thor ventured. 

Loki quirked an eyebrow at him. “You certainly have a type.” Then he cleared his throat and looked down at the crowd of people gathering below them. “No question where I’d end up, of course, in that sorting business,” he said, clasping his hands behind his back. "I'm practically the mascot." 

“Of course,” Thor shrugged. “You’d be a Raven-dor. Raven-bird. Whatever. One of the clever ones.”

Loki bit his bottom lip and held very still, and Thor wondered if he’d said something wrong. “…Jane said I should read all those books but I couldn’t get through them,” he went on, as a sort of a disclaimer in case his knowledge of the ‘sorting business’ was deficient. “I couldn’t get past the way the large boy treated his, um, adopted brother.” Thor’s eye scrunched closed and the smile that torqued his cheeks felt…apologetic, though whether that was for the content of the books, his failure to read them, or something much greater, he couldn’t quite say. 

“Uh- _huh_ ,” said Loki, with a slow dip of his head. 

“Did you read them?” Thor asked cheerfully, figuring that Loki probably had and was just waiting for the chance to mention it. 

“No, but, Barton had read them with his son,” Loki explained. “And then I, um,” 

Thor shook his head. “Ah, Loki…When we get to Earth you are going to have to apologize.” 

Loki’s face flinched. “Actually I wanted to talk to you about that,” he said in his most diplomatic voice. 

The first strums of a lyre rose from somewhere in the crowd below, and Thor clapped Loki on the shoulder. “Later, all right?” he asked. “Can’t let this party start without us.” 

“Later then,” Loki agreed, and Thor pretended not to notice the worried glance his brother cast up at the stars. 

 

The makeshift feast kicked off in spectacular fashion, literally, with Thor kicking down the door that separated the cargo bay from the corridor beyond, to wild acclamation. Then of course there was music and drink, and many tear-stained faces recounting the virtues of the loved ones they had all lost. It was cathartic, and comforting, and Thor really did feel at home. In number, the Asgardians were a tiny fraction of what they once had been, a group that felt more like a family now than a nation. Thor was thankful for each and every one of the people who were left, and he felt the responsibility for protecting them quickening in his heart like springtime in a tree.

By the time they got around to dancing, Brunnhilde swore that she didn’t want to participate and Thor respected that, but then she spent an hour staring balefully at Bruce (who was being the universe’s most awkward wallflower), finally said “Fuck it,” and asked Bruce to dance with her. Bruce pulled Thor into the dance in short order, and in two or three turns Thor was dancing with Brunnhilde after all. 

She put her hand on his shoulder, keeping herself in place, and as they stepped together Thor felt he might have crossed the threshold into some vaulted temple where the air itself was blessed. He basked in the feeling of connection, of her energy joined to his. _This is right,_ he thought, soaking up the moment. Her face was bright with laughter, her smile showing her teeth, and her cheeks were plump with the sort of cheer that seemed both ancient and newly born. Illuminated in persimmon-gold fire she was more beautiful than ever before; an ocean at sunset. 

_This is how it’s supposed to be,_ Thor thought. _Valkyrie…Welcome home._

He was certain he hadn’t said that aloud, but she looked at him as if she’d heard him anyway. Her happy smile faded, her eyes going wide and solemn. She seemed to lose track of the music, her feet slowing until she was standing still, facing him with just that one hand on his shoulder. 

“…Thank you,” she said. 

“For what?” Thor asked, automatically blithe, even though in his heart he felt the gravity of her words. 

Her lips quirked. “For this,” she said bluntly, and pulled him to her kiss. 

 

When she finally let him go he was sizzling like a lit fuse and breathing like a galloped horse. She grinned, but suddenly caught sight of something across the room that usurped her mischievous mood. Her eyes narrowed as though they’d acquired a target. 

“Shoot,” she muttered. “He’s back.” 

Thor followed her gaze and noticed Loki standing stock-still in the middle of the room, facing one of the fires. As Thor watched, a couple of dancers swept by, and there was no mistake: the skirts of their clothing whirled right through the edges of Loki’s form. 

“I’ll go talk to him,” Thor resolved, and kissed Brunnhilde’s hand in parting. 

The King of Asgard made his way through the crowd until he was standing beside the shade of his brother. 

“Not like you to skip out on a party,” Thor remarked, and Loki’s projection startled, turning his head with awkward stiffness towards the sound of Thor’s voice. “…Hello?” Thor asked a half-minute later, and then finally the ghostly eyes focused on him. 

“Thor,” the shade whispered, and smiled at him with grayish lips, a split-second too late to conceal a grimace of pain. _Give me a minute,_ Loki’s voice said in Thor’s head. 

“You’re ghost-Loki again, aren’t you,” Thor accused worriedly. “What’s going on?” 

Ghost-Loki’s eyes unfocused, looking distractedly towards the glow of the nearest brazier. “…This is my first stop on my way back,” he said, and even though his mouth muttered the words, Thor was still hearing Loki’s voice in his head.

 _Just let me have this one minute,_ thought Loki’s voice. _It’s a good minute. I wasn’t unhappy._

Thor scowled, oddly wounded. “Stop that, will you? What do you mean, ‘on your way back’?”

Loki refocused, apparently with effort. “I’m going backwards,” Loki explained in a raspy whisper. “It’s the only way. It gets easier… further back. We'll be all right.” 

“Backwards?” Thor echoed, confused. “What do you mean?” Loki’s gaze drifted away, and he seemed like he might be listening to music from a hundred years ago rather than the music that was currently in the room. Thor felt the urge to grab his brother by the shoulders and shake him, but of course he couldn’t do that with an illusion. “Loki, you’re starting to freak me out,” Thor warned. “Where are you really, right now?”

Those icy eyes blinked, and Thor noticed that the firelight, though it flickered and cast its hue on the rest of his brother’s form, didn’t reflect in the eyes. It was downright creepy. “I’m… in your quarters,” Loki said quietly. “Looking out the window.” 

“Okay,” Thor said, trying to stay calm and remembering abruptly that Loki had wanted to talk to him about something. “I’m gonna go talk to you—to the real you,” he clarified. 

The ghostly projection resumed staring, distractedly, at the magical flames. “Hurry,” Loki whispered, after a slightly-too-long pause.

 

Thor hurried. His room was just down the hall, and the sight of Loki standing right where the ghost said he’d be was something of a relief. 

“Hi,” Thor said, slightly out of breath and glad to see that this version of his brother, which was probably at least as much flesh-and-blood as it was magic, seemed totally fine.

Loki turned his head, easily, comfortably. “Is everything all right?” he asked, voice perfectly smooth.

“That weird copy of you is back, the one Hulk thought was a ghost,” Thor explained.

“Hmm,” Loki mused, furrowing his brows. Thor waited patiently for his brother to comment further, but Loki just looked back out the window, silently scanning the stars.

“…Aren’t you going to go and talk to him?” Thor asked. 

Loki gave Thor the look that meant he was being endearingly dense. “If it’s really a ghost then it’s from the future,” Loki parsed. “I’m sure it knows what it’s doing.” 

“It’s standing around in the middle of the party and just being weird,” Thor complained. “I think there’s something wrong with it. Will you please come and do something about it?”

Loki sighed. “Oh, all right. If it will make you feel better.” Loki turned towards his brother but his eyes lingered on the stars, searching, and Thor felt a twinge of dread.

“What are you looking for?” Thor asked, hoping he didn’t sound as perturbed as he felt. 

Loki tore his eyes away from the window with an expression that wasn’t quite a rueful smile. “Something from a nightmare,” he said, in a way that was not in the least bit reassuring. 

There was an odd drop in pressure, which Thor had not caused consciously to happen. 

“Lighten up, will you?” Loki asked, rubbing at his forehead. “It gives me a headache when you do that.”

Thor tried his best to think happy thoughts—the feast, his people, his Valkyrie—and the pressure rose a little. “By the way,” he asked, folding his arms across his chest. “What did you want to talk to me about?”

“Oh,” Loki looked vaguely embarrassed. “I was going to suggest that maybe it isn’t the best idea to bring me back to Earth.” 

“Pfft,” Thor scoffed. “It probably isn’t, to be honest,” he said. “But I wouldn’t worry, brother. Everything…” his thought disintegrated as he felt a rumble, a vibration of power shuddering the ship. “…That wasn’t me,” he said, to Loki’s wide-eyed expression. 

“Tractor beam,” Loki inhaled, and looked back at the window just in time to see an immense vessel rise into view. 

They stared in unison for a second, and Thor felt slightly detached, like what he was seeing couldn’t be real. He stole a glance at Loki’s face and knew, even without that final confirmation, that this was it. This was the Mad Titan. 

A cry of alarm went up from the cargo bay, audible down the hall—of course with the transparent ceiling, everyone at the party could now see the massive ship towering over them. Thor’s heart began to ache. 

“…We’ll fight him,” Thor heard himself saying. “We’ll beat him.”

“Take this,” Loki hissed, and pushed his palm against Thor’s chest. 

Thor felt a little thump of energy and a trickle of cold moved through him, diffusing like a drop of dye in water. He looked down at his arms, half expecting to see a faint glow of blue under his skin—but whatever Loki had done to him, it wasn’t visible. “The fuck was that?!” Thor exclaimed. 

“Power,” Loki explained. “From the Casket of Ancient Winters. It’s so you won’t freeze to death, all right?” 

“Why the fuck would I freeze to death?!” Thor demanded.

“Well anyway now you won’t,” Loki muttered. 

The sounds of panicked voices grew louder—people were running in the hall outside the door. 

“Go on,” Loki said, stepping back. “Get to the bridge. To Heimdall.” 

“What about you?” Thor felt lightning brewing inside him, certain there was a battle coming.

“I’m going to buy you as much time as I can,” he said ominously, and there were tears in his eyes. 

Thor opened his mouth to protest but was drowned out by the boom of an explosion. The room came apart around them like so much wet tissue.

 

When Thor regained his senses he was several decks down, half-buried in wreckage. The artificial gravity was sputtering in places, odd items floating and tumbling precariously through the areas where the grid was damaged. _The bridge,_ Thor thought in desperation. He had to get to the bridge. Heimdall would be there; together they would figure out how to fight back. He struggled free of the remains of a crumpled bulkhead and took off at a run.

Around the first corner he found himself face-to-face with a pack of aliens that resembled evolved Chitauri. He wasted no time vaporizing them with lightning, barely breaking his stride. Down the next corridor he found the first dead bodies—Asgardians. His heart began to burn at the cruelty of it, the irony of it—they had escaped Hela and Surtur and Ragnarok, only to die like this? It wasn't fair. It wasn't right. 

He reached an intersection. The bridge was to the right—but sounds of battle came from the left, and so Thor went that way instead, rallying his power as he’d done in the fight with Hela. He encountered another group of invaders and demolished them with a cyclone of lightning even as another explosion knocked him flat. 

The ship shuddered and Thor got to his feet—there were people fighting up ahead, people screaming, people being killed. Thor barreled into the fray, radiating lethal streaks of light and electrocuting a half-dozen attackers at once, and then another, and another, and three more after that. The back of his mind wished for Mjolnir for the millionth time and he used that thought to throw lightning to spectacular effect, a single bolt cast from his open palm skewering ten enemies in a row. 

“ _Thor!_ ” It was Brunnhilde, the Dragonfang in her hand. There was a cowering group of at least two dozen Asgardians behind her, all weaponless. He fought his way to her side. “The lifeboat,” she said. “It can escape the tractor beam.” 

Thor understood immediately that was where she was taking these people; shepherding them down to the lifeboat hidden in the belly of the ship. Another blast made the walls and floor groan around them. Getting to the bridge would have to wait—Thor would help with the evacuation first.

“Let’s go,” Thor said grimly. 

On the next level down they found Korg, scorched head-to-toe with laser marks and leading another small group of survivors.

“Bad news, man,” Korg shook his head. “This way’s blocked. We were going to try up and around the starboard reactor deck.” 

Brunnhilde swore. “There’s a hull breach on that side,” she said. “It’s a no-go.” 

There was a beat. “…Figure we’re trapped then,” Korg said sadly.

“Hold on,” Thor thought hard, getting his bearings. “We just have to go straight down.” He looked at the floor, shifted his weight, and held out his hand to Brunnhilde. 

From the look on her face she knew exactly what he was thinking. She pressed the hilt of the Dragonfang into his palm. Vines of lightning curled around Thor’s arms and flashed down the blade of the legendary sword. When it was glowing white-hot he plunged it through the floor, cutting a jagged escape hatch. 

When they made it to the lifeboat Loki was already there and the humble vessel was already packed. 

“How many are aboard?” Thor asked.

“Nearly four hundred,” Loki answered. “And nineteen of the twenty escape pods have jumped, presumably with at least four people each.” Thor’s brain glazed over, in no mood for math. “Thor,” Loki said quietly. “It’s just barely half.” 

Half. Half of the thousand they’d saved from Ragnarok. Thor didn’t know how many people the lifeboat was rated to carry, but it was clearly already over capacity. Standing room only. He looked around. No one else was coming. This was it. 

The Statesman was still being rocked by explosions. If the emergency craft didn’t launch now, it might not get the chance. The engines were whining to life. 

Brunnhilde was standing just inside the door, shouting instructions at the people within, something about the cloaking device and sending a distress signal. He made up his mind. 

“Get in,” Thor motioned to Loki. “You’re going with them.” 

“I can’t,” said Loki simply. 

Thor reached out to grab his brother’s arm to drag him, but his hand swiped through empty air. 

“Goddamn it, Loki, _where are you?_ ” Thor growled. 

“I’m where I need to be,” Loki said solemnly. “And now you have to get aboard—your people need you.”

“They’re _our_ people, and I am not abandoning you to be killed by that monster,” Thor declared. He saw Brunnhilde turn to step out of the doorway and moved to block her.

“Brunnhilde,” said Thor. 

She looked up at his face and her expression froze. 

“Go with them,” Thor told her. 

“No,” she said, eyes wide. 

“Take care of them. Get them to Earth.” 

“Fuck that,” she said, and wiped angrily at her cheeks. “I’m staying if you’re staying.” Her voice trembled. 

He cupped her face in his hands. “…I’m ordering you,” he said, voice as firm and calm as he could manage, even though he felt like crying. 

He watched her eyes fill with realization, with understanding. He knew she didn’t want to go. She didn’t want to leave him. He hated that he needed her to do this for him—but it had to be her. There was not a doubt in his mind that this was the time to give orders.

“I'm going to kick your ass for this,” she said, attempting to salvage her composure.

He leaned in and pressed his lips to her forehead. "I look forward to it," he said.

A stream of the invading aliens began to drop through the opening that Thor had cut between the decks. “Close the door and launch the ship,” Thor commanded. “Go.” 

He stepped back, and she squeezed her eyes shut and slammed the button to close the door. It sealed into place between them with a clank and a hiss, and the timbre of the engines changed, the lifeboat rising free of its dock. 

Thor immediately set to work blasting the Mad Titan’s minions who were attempting to swarm the departing craft. A series of yellow lights began to flash, an alarm blared, and Thor grabbed hold of something just in time as the bay underwent a rapid decompression and the lifeboat shot off into space, dragging at least a hundred of the invading creatures with it. Thor watched for a handful of seconds as the last remnant of Asgard shrank to a point of light no bigger than a star and then vanished from view. 

She’d get them to Earth, he told himself. She’d keep them safe. He would see her again. 

 

Bad things happened, after that. Worse than Sakaar, worse than Ragnarok. But Thor didn’t die of a fractured skull. Didn’t die when the Statesman exploded. Didn’t freeze solid in space. He didn’t even die when the power of an entire star burned its way through his body. Thor survived all that.

And then at the critical moment, when he should have sliced through Thanos’s head, he buried the blade of his new weapon deep in Thanos’s heart instead—and that failure, that one choice, choosing heart instead of head--erased half the lives in the universe. 

It was Thor’s fault. 

No one said it, but he knew it was true. Probably everyone blamed themselves a little, asked what they could have done differently—but Thor didn’t have to ask. He knew what he could have done differently. He had been _that close_ to saving all of them. He had been that close… and had failed. 

He found it hard to focus on the things Steve and Natasha were saying to him. None of the others had any idea what it felt like right now inside his mind. They simply weren’t on his level. Killing Thanos had been Thor’s responsibility, his task, his mission. He was the only one with the power of a god. And he’d fucked it all up.

Something Brunnhilde had said came back to him. _How much stupid useless power Odin gave his children._ She’d said she had wanted to hurt him for that, and now he understood that feeling. Not that hurting himself would help anything—he’d been hurt more than enough, and none of that had helped anyone, so he knew there’d be no point to it. There was no point… to any of it. 

After a few days the surviving Wakandans got around to thanking him for all the rain, as it was more than making up for a recent drought, and Thor had enough sense to know that meant they were sick of it. The weather wasn’t totally up to him; the planet did have its own ideas about such things—but it was true that whenever he got distracted, staring off into the distance with his mis-matched eyes, it started to pour. And after it started Thor often felt too tired to try to make it stop. 

It was during one of those pervasive rainstorms that Bruce finally cornered him. The sight of Bruce—though initially Thor had been glad to see him safe and sound on Earth, of course—now brought back too many memories of the Statesman, of Brunnhilde, of Loki. Even the memories of their escape from Sakaar were painful now. That had been a colorful jaunt, a fun little romp. The only thing at stake back then had been, what? Thor’s own life? His freedom? His personal comfort? 

What a joke. How many times over would he happily sell himself now, if such a trade could bring back a fraction of the lives that had been lost… Maybe he should have just stayed a slave, played the Grandmaster’s games. Maybe he should have taken Loki up on his offer, in what felt like another life: _join me at the Grandmaster’s side._ Ragnarok may or may not have happened, had Thor stayed on Sakaar. For all he knew more Asgardians would have survived, had Hela gotten her way. Would Thanos have been able to wrest the Tesseract from his sister’s hands so easily? Hela might have won, fighting Thanos. Hela would have aimed for the head. 

“Hey,” said Bruce, sitting on the couch next to him. 

Thor felt a dull ache of annoyance. He’d missed his chance to exit the room when Bruce came in. He wondered if he could pretend to fall asleep or something. 

“Has anybody told you that you’re radioactive now?” Bruce asked. Thor didn’t know what to say to that, so he didn’t say anything. “Yeah… it’s from what you did on Nidavellir,” Bruce explained, unprompted. “Rocket filled us in. There’s like, a lot of residual radiation that you’re giving off. It’s kind of not safe for you to be around people right now. I mean, except for me. My own radiation problem makes me immune to yours, I guess.” 

“…Also,” said Bruce, when Thor had nothing to say on the subject of radiation. “Princess Shuri figured out how to get some diagnostics out of your cybernetic eye. Like, brain scans.”

“Wonderful,” Thor scoffed. “What is it about younger royal siblings that make them think they’re entitled to look inside other peoples’ heads?” 

“…yeah,” Bruce said uncomfortably. “She probably should have asked you first before doing it, but, um, apparently you almost had your skull crushed?” 

“Yes, thank you. I remember,” Thor grumbled. His head pounded at the mention of it and he felt a sudden nauseous flush, like he might have a fever. He remembered plenty of other injuries too, injuries from Sakaar, and the thought that Bruce might want to talk about any of that now filled him with stale and sour anger. 

“Well, it looks like, you might have the Asgardian version of a traumatic brain injury,” Bruce informed him, because apparently Bruce was trying to make him feel worse. 

“Brain injury, there’s a tidy excuse,” Thor said, and launched into a high-pitched impression, possibly of Jane: “ _It’s not Thor’s fault, he was practically brainless at the time!_ Is that what you’re getting at? Brain injury. I may not be a genius like half of you infuriating mortals but you know what? I’m not actually stupid.” The excuse of an impaired brain was burning him now, blowing the ashes from his heart and uncovering red coals. 

Bruce was just sitting there, placidly non-judgmental. Thor couldn’t stand it anymore—Bruce was a hairsbreadth from pitying him. Thunder rumbled in the distance. 

“I’ve done my share of stupid things. But my brain is fine,” Thor seethed. “My head may have got a little bit smashed in the fight that killed half my people and all of my brother, but _so what_ , you and I both know I’ve been through worse. And healed from it. So it certainly wasn’t a brain injury. I chose wrong, all right? I made the wrong move. I chose wrong, with my perfectly functional, perfectly adequate brain. There is no excuse. _It was my fault_.” 

That was the first time he’d said it aloud, and it felt just as hollow and rotted-out released into the air as it had felt cooped up inside him. 

Bruce blinked at him, turbulent emotions rising behind his eyes. “All right,” he said, and took a deep breath. “…I think Hulk wants to talk to you.”

“Fine,” Thor said. 

“You sure?” Bruce asked, slightly nervous. “I feel like this might be a big deal—Hulk’s been really out of it, really, um, depressed. He didn’t even want to smash a single alien. Now he just, out of the blue, wants to talk to you.”

“You going to Hulk out or what?” Thor asked, though he genuinely did not care one way or the other. 

“I think I— _augh_ ,” Bruce doubled over, convulsing, and then ballooned in size, turning green—and after a few more seconds of horrible noises, Hulk was standing in the middle of the room, catching his breath. His huge face swung towards Thor and his eyes shone with grief and before Thor could say a word, the Hulk gathered him up into a hug. 

“Thor,” said Hulk, and Thor felt like those massive arms might just be trying to squeeze the sudden lump out of his throat. 

The hug went on so long that Hulk began rocking gently side-to-side, as though Thor were an infant to be soothed. “Thor…” Hulk said after a while. “Not your fault.” 

“Yes it is,” Thor said in a rusty voice. 

“No.” Hulk shook his head. “It not Thor’s fault. It’s Hulk’s fault.”

Thor blinked a few times, confused. “What?”

“Hulk not kill Th…Thanos,” Hulk admitted, anguished. “Loki told Hulk to kill Thanos but… Hulk… lost fight! That’s why it’s Hulk’s fault—it’s mh…my fault!” 

Thor knew what the sudden heaving of Hulk’s chest meant, what those doleful keening sounds signified. He wrapped his arms around Hulk’s neck, hugging him much tighter than anyone else ever could. Hulk’s emotions, it seemed, were a little bit contagious. 

Thor cried with him until the sky ran out of rain. 

 

It was Bruce who woke up in the morning, just in time for Thor to press a mug of coffee into his hands. 

“Uhg, what happened?” Bruce asked, checking his surroundings for Hulk-induced damaged. “What did Hulk say? Is he all right?”

Thor smiled with the sides of his eyes. “No, but he will be,” he said. He took a sip of his own coffee and looked out at the mist rising from the rain-soaked savannah. “Hulk and I both blame ourselves for what Thanos did.” 

Bruce’s voice turned solemn. “Thor. The only one to blame for what Thanos did… is Thanos himself.” 

“I know.” Thor gazed out at the horizon.

“Umm… about what I mentioned last night, will you let Princess Shuri take a look at you?” Bruce asked tentatively. “I read Dr. Foster’s paper on the Asgardian healing room stuff, and, I gotta say, what Shuri has here seems almost comparable.” 

The lemon-and-gray sunrise was bleaching the sky. Thor sipped his coffee, and agreed. 

 

Shuri and Thor had been introduced before, in the immediate aftermath when only Steve and Natasha seemed to be functioning. The teenaged princess was truly a prodigy, smarter than Stark and Banner and Jane combined. 

“So. What do you think of Wakanda?” she asked him now, escorting him towards her lab. 

Nobody else was around, so Thor shrugged. “Reminds me a little of Asgard,” he admitted. “Especially the, um, the hoarded wealth and snobbery.” He meant no offense, and he was sure she knew it.

She laughed like a startled bird, her eyes flashing. “That would be due to our vibranium and our technology,” she said. 

“For us it was gold and magic. Made us better than everyone, or so I was taught.” 

He caught the look on her face—she _was_ better than everyone, and she knew it, and was just barely mature enough not to mention it. (Though she _had_ mentioned, once or twice, that she’d designed the very fashionable radiation-proof frock she was currently wearing, which allowed her to be in Thor’s radioactive company without fear of ill effects.) 

“You would’ve liked my brother,” she said, and Thor felt a little pulse of pain in his heart. 

“I wish I could say the same,” he replied, and meant it with all his being. 

They arrived at the lab, a workspace of which Shuri was fiercely protective and rightfully proud. She passionately explained a thousand details that Thor couldn’t begin to grasp about what her equipment was for and how she’d come up with the way to solve all sorts of unsolvable scientific problems. Finally she indicated where he ought to sit, and held out her hand expectantly. 

“Can I see your eye?” she asked. 

“Oh, sure,” Thor said, and dug the cybernetic implant out with his fingers, plopping it into her waiting palm. 

She wasted no time diagnosing the lingering effects of what had definitely been a brain injury, and recommended no less than four types of treatment. Then out of curiosity she scanned the rest of him, and fell abruptly silent. 

“…Everything okay?” Thor wondered when she hadn’t said a word for at least a full minute. 

She looked at him with such raw fascination it was decidedly unnerving. She was like a mouse that had just discovered—and become immediately enthralled by—the existence of eagles. 

“I was taking Vision apart like a puzzle,” she mused. “Vision made sense to me. But you don’t. What’s the source of your power?”

 _It comes from Asgard_ , had been the answer he’d been taught. But Asgard was gone and Thor knew he was more powerful than ever. “I was born with it,” he said, hoping that would quell her curiosity. 

“Is it genetic? Your parents were deities; will your children be as well?”

“I don’t know,” Thor answered honestly. “Sort of hope not.”

“Would you say it’s more of a gift or a destiny?” Shuri wondered. 

He sighed. “I have no idea,” he said. “There was a lot I didn’t choose or earn, and a lot that I did. Same as anyone else.”

“Sorry for the interrogation.” She grinned, her eyes bright with teasing. “I’ve unraveled some spectacular phenomena in this laboratory, but this is the first time I’ve got my hands on an actual god.” 

There was something hungry in her tone—like a landlocked child who yearned for the sea. She reminded him a little bit of Jane, if Jane had been a teenaged princess with access to virtually unlimited resources to fuel her interests. Uncharted territory called her name; she craved the thrill of discovery.

“Study away,” Thor granted amiably. “I’m an open book.” 

“A book that breaks every law of magnetohydrodynamics.” She made a face that Thor interpreted to mean she was thinking at the speed of light. “Is it like… the Tinkerbell effect?” She asked abruptly. “Do you operate on people’s faith in you?”

Thor knew what she meant but didn’t think his power worked quite that way. Then he remembered something Bruce had said to him, on the Statesman—no, it was before that, on the Commodore. He smiled. “It might be more like the Dumbo effect, where I operate on faith in myself? No different from other people, really. I eat and sleep, I think and feel. I try my best. And sometimes I fail.”

“Ha,” her eyes danced. “You almost said: ‘I’m only human’, didn’t you?” she accused. 

“I’ve been a human,” Thor acknowledged. “And that experience taught me a lot. Taught me humility.” 

“ _Humility?_ ” she frowned, aghast, like he’d said a dirty word. “Are we really that bad?”

He felt an irrepressible fondness for her then, like a plant that had suddenly detected a light source to grow towards. 

“Nope.” He smiled. “You’re really that good.” 

 

In the days that followed, Thor practically lived in the Princess’s laboratory. Bruce was there too, more often than not, and Thor could see the roles the three of them were playing. Thor was the big brother. Bruce was the Erik Selvig to Shuri’s Jane: a mentor who didn’t know he was also a father figure. 

Together Bruce and Shuri figured out how to un-irradiate Thor from the effects of Nidavellir. They also treated his brain injury, and he was glad for the help, for the intervention. It wasn’t just the advanced medical tech of Wakanda that was healing him: it was Bruce and Shuri themselves, the time they spent near him, the energy in the room with them when they got excited about whatever they were working on. They were stabilizing him, holding him up.

In the evenings Bruce drifted closer to Thor, needing a hug for Hulk, and also for himself. Thor needed those hugs too, and whenever Hulk was emotional enough to convince Bruce to transform, Thor would sit with him late into the night, reassuring the Hulk over and over that it hadn’t been his fault. 

Gradually it seemed like Hulk believed him. 

With Bruce’s cooperation, Hulk and Thor began to spend more time together, Hulk figuring out how to exist on Earth without feeling hated. They walked together across the savannah, visited the giant tame rhinoceroses, explored the city. Thor suggested they visit Shuri’s lab, but Hulk’s face clouded over. “No,” Hulk said. “Lab scary.” 

“But Shuri is there,” Thor said. “Wouldn’t you like to meet a real princess?”

“Shuri scary,” Hulk grumped. “Too smart.”

Thor almost laughed. “Hulk smart, too,” he said. 

Hulk gave him a bashful smile. “Thanks,” he said. 

They were going to be okay.

 

Things were getting better, gradually, day by day. The sun rose and set; Earth’s shadow slid across the moon. The whole world was picking up the pieces now. Thor thought of Loki at random times and wondered where the ghost of his brother was now, in their past. Visiting only the happier moments, hopefully, and no doubt working on some scheme, some twist in the plot. Their paths had split after all; Loki was going backwards. Thor was going ahead. Whatever his brother was up to, Thor wished him luck, and missed him. 

For years Thor had been dreaming of flames. Now, he dreamed something new: water and light, suspended in a sacred space, a cathedral of love and loss and fate.

He couldn’t explain exactly when he figured out what that new dream meant in the real world; when he knew for sure that he could manifest it. It was like he’d been immersed in a new language and slowly found he could understand it without the aid of the Allspeak. It must have been matriculating slowly in his heart ever since that night when Hulk had first come out of hiding to comfort him, to share his grief and guilt. It was a new ability, a new emotion—now he just had to wait for the right moment to exercise it. 

That moment came when the lifeboat from the Statesman appeared in the skies above Wakanda, nineteen escape pods in tow. Brunnhilde’s voice came through the Kimoyo beads on Shuri’s wrist. They’d made it, they were safe. They were home. 

Thor threw a rainbow across the sky. 

He knew without a doubt, as the lifeboat touched down and the door he’d ordered her to close flew open, revealing Brunnhilde standing in the doorway ready to kick everyone else’s ass and then Thor’s twice—this was the beginning.

Thanos had beaten them, defeated them, killed the people they loved. 

Half the universe was dead. 

But _hope_ wasn’t.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The moral of this story was actually discovered by the incredibly perceptive _RascalousScandal_ way back in a comment on Chapter 9:
> 
> _If there was a motto to this story it might be that no one is unfuckable. Life fucks us all up. But that doesn’t invalidate who you choose to be or the good you’ve done. So just cause you get fucked doesn’t mean your life is over._   
>  _Hope and joy and laughter don’t have to die just because a bad thing happened to you. You don’t have to fake that you’re okay, but you don’t have to let your suffering define you either._
> 
> I have never in my life experienced someone reaching into my soul and saying what I wanted to say so clearly, and better than I ever could. So thank you again, RascalousScandal, for understanding. :) 
> 
> This story, though I certainly amused myself writing it, ended up taking a couple of slightly serious turns that I hadn't fully expected. From the beginning I was planning to end it with Thor ordering Val to board the lifeboat, and that was really going to be the final scene, her saying "I love you" at the last minute before the door closed because can anyone ever get enough of that sort of dramatic goodbye in an outerspace opera?? Then a dear friend of mine pointed out that instead of saying "I love you," Val would say, "I'm going to kick your ass", and Thor would know what she meant; that that was her way of saying ILY. And so, that's how that scene came together. <3


End file.
